Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige were both born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1969. They collaborate as artists and filmmakers, creating thematic and formal links between photography, video, performance, installation, sculpture, and cinema. Over the last fifteen years, the duo has particularly focused on the fabrication of images andthe construction of imaginaries. Using personal or political elements to record stories that were stifled in prevailing history, Hadjithomas and Joreige explore the relationship between image and narrative. Their poignant, complex works are often intimate, established through conversations with various people they meet. Where sites have been transformed or demolished, particularly through war, Hadjithomas and Joreige's work provides a social memory for those affected, giving potency to the visible remnants. Applying a documentary approach to work that rewrites history raises questions about belief, fragmentation, transmission-bias, and who has the right to be the custodian of lapsed memories. Highlighting absence by documenting the tangible allows the artists to examine imaginary constructs and the contemporary corruption of image.