Artwork Details:

Artist(s)

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige

Title

The Rocket Cedar IV: a reconstruction

Date

2011

Medium

Iron, Corian

Dimensions

800 x 120 x 100 cm

Edition

1/5 + AP

Credit

Produced by Sharjah Art Foundation

The Rocket Cedar IV: a reconstruction

The Rocket Cedar IV: a reconstruction

From ‘Lebanese Rocket Society: Elements for a Monument’, 2011

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.

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