Walid Raad: Festival of (in)gratitude

The CENTQUATRE-PARIS in the 19th arrondissement hosts Lebanese-American artist Walid Raad for a month-long exhibition of recent works rooted in the wars that have shaken the Middle East over the past 40 years. Visitors wander through photographs, collages, drawings, texts, sculptures, and videos, all commented on by the artist himself.

Raad’s work takes a pivotal historical moment—the years 1982-1983, marked by the occupation of Lebanon, the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and the exile of the Palestine Liberation Organization to Tunis—and explores its contemporary resonances across different spaces and temporalities. In the guided tours he offers, Raad—both archivist and storyteller—recounts invented, transmitted, or found stories.

The artist is familiar with these hybrid formats, a place for reflection on art and history, emotion and memory. The works presented today traverse a vast territory—from Lebanon to Tunis via Ljubljana—and embrace war and reconstruction in Lebanon as well as the history of art in the Arab world.