Cuadro

Nadine Kanso | What If

Nadine Kanso’s What If series uses contemporary images of period architecture in the older sections of Beirut to present an alternate reality. The artist questions what the city would have looked like were it to have been spared the ravages of war and the sleek impact of modernity.

Shooting her images from the sea, as if through the eyes of a traveler coming to, or returning to the Beirut shore, Kanso adds a feeling of transience. The water is not calm or peaceful; its shifting waves almost a herald of change and turmoil.

The artist removes modern-day architectural influences; her images depict buildings built in the French colonial style. She romanticizes the present in stark black and white images, as though acknowledging it as the soon-to-be past. Nadine Kanso documents a reality she believes to be ephemeral – architecture, forms, textures – thus freezing time in a carefully selected reality of her choosing.

Nadine Kanso was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1968. She graduated from the Lebanese American University with degrees in Communication Arts and Advertising Design.

Kanso has exhibited in a group show at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. In 2010, she was commissioned by Louis Vuitton to create a series that celebrated Dubai’s relationship with the ocean and the sport of sailing. Bonhams later auctioned the exhibit for charity.