April 05 – May 05, Massy Arts hosts a new exhibition by visual artist Dana Qaddah.

Selected by Vancouver’s Capture Photography Festival, “Roof D’état” uses the vernacular of urban visual culture in Lebanon, reflecting on the deteriorating civil conditions in urban centres at a time which foreshadowed the failure of the Lebanese state.

The Massy Arts Gallery is located at 23 East Pender Street in Chinatown, Vancouver.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 12pm to 5pm.

Entrance is free, and masks are mandatory.

To contact the gallery, send an email to: info@massyarts.com.

Click here to register for Dana Qaddah’s Artist Talk on April 19

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Artist’s Statement

These photographs were captured on a rooftop studio in Beirut, at sunset, between July and August 2019. The sculptures have since been disassembled, and the sun has since set on Lebanon as we know it.

Using the vernacular of urban visual culture in Lebanon, the works reflect on the deteriorating civil conditions in urban centres at a time which foreshadowed the failure of the state.

Since the October 17, 2019 Revolution, Lebanon has been caught in an economical and political deadlock, with a free-falling economy resulting from decades of state mismanagement, the pandemic, and the tragic loss suffered in the August 4 explosion. With a currency that has lost 90% of its value, many Lebanese people are finding essential goods like gas, water, bread and electricity, to be a luxury.

– Text by Dana Qaddah

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The Artist

Dana Qaddah (b. Beirut, Lebanon) is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator currently based on unceded Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish territory. Qaddah’s practice uses archives of personal and itinerant cultural knowledge to traverse themes of Arab futurism and storytelling, while reflecting on the condition of being abstracted from the destruction of one’s own sense of self and place.

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