Overview
The Return addresses the troubled relationship between antiquities and national identity by following a legal case about the repatriation of a marble sculpture. Depicting a bull’s head, the sculpture was excavated at the archaeological site of the Eshmun temple in Saida in 1967. Stored in Byblos after its discovery, it was looted in 1981 during the Lebanese civil war and sold several times before reappearing on loan in the Greek and Roman Galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2017.
The performance traces the journey of the sculpture over 50 years, using interviews as well inventory lists, photographs and other evidence presented to the New York Supreme Court as part of a series of investigations that lasted for a few years. The object was eventually restituted to Lebanon and is now on display at the National Museum in Beirut.