Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige
The Rocket Cedar IV: a reconstruction
2011
Iron, Corian
800 x 120 x 100 cm
1/5 + AP
Produced by Sharjah Art Foundation
Artists and filmmakers, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige interrogate the creation of images and the development of imaginary fields that disrupt official historical narrative. Their preoccupation here in this modular project relates to the Lebanese Rocket Society—a collective based in Beirut in the 1960s, who had achieved limited success in launching a space rocket due to their miniscule budget, but who had become notorious, attracting the attention of the then Lebanese President Fouad Chehab. In The Rocket Cedar IV: a reconstruction (2011), the artists created a life-size replica of a rocket first created by the society in the 1960s. Reconstituted here, it examines the intersection of science, politics and the wilful right to dream of what could have happened had the nation’s historical path been altered.