Written by Wafa RozTagreed Darghouth was born in Saida, Lebanon, in 1979. In 2000 she received diplomas in painting and art education from the Lebanese University and Lebanese Teachers Institution,...


TAGREED DARGHOUTH, Lebanon (1979)
Bio
Written by Wafa Roz
Written by Wafa Roz
Tagreed Darghouth was born in Saida, Lebanon, in 1979. In 2000 she received diplomas in painting and art education from the Lebanese University and Lebanese Teachers Institution, respectively. In the summers of 2000 and 2001, Darghouth participated in the Ayloul Summer Academy at, Jordan. The program was led by celebrated Syrian modernist Marwan Kassab BaChi (1934-2016), who had a significant impact on the young artist. In 2002, she moved to Paris to study Space Art at the École Nationale Supérieure des Art Décoratifs. She returned to Lebanon in 2003 to resume teaching at various public schools before committing solely to painting in 2007.
Darghouth depicted the strife she witnessed during the 2006 Lebanon War with Israel in Falling Parts, her second solo exhibition at the Goethe Institute in Beirut (2006). Borrowing conceptually from Marwan’s Marionette series, the exhibition featured paintings of deconstructed dolls symbolizing the violence that occurred throughout the conflict. It was through this exhibition that the Lebanese gallerist Saleh Barakat saw Darghouth’s talent and invited her to exhibit at Agial Gallery in Beirut.
Most of Darghouth’s work reflects on the feebleness of humanity by engaging popular culture and socio-political issues. In Mirror Mirror! 2008, she explored the relationship between plastic surgery and societal conceptions of beauty. She then painted domestic helpers for her 2010 exhibition Fair and Lovely, which commented on racial tensions and oppressive power dynamics between workers and their employers in Lebanon. Throughout this period, Darghouth’s canvases drew inspiration from the work of British portraitist Lucian Freud and controversial German artist Georg Baselitz.
Darghouth then delved into universal concerns in an abstract expressionist style. She addressed mortality, violence, and war in Canticles of Death (2011), a series of paintings of nuclear explosions and skulls. The English Rainbow (2011) depicts nuclear mushroom clouds in seven colors with corresponding nicknames coined by the British government during World War II. She highlighted the contrast between these innocuous nicknames (Violet Mist, Red Roses, Green Flax, Yellow Sun, and Blue Bunny) and the lethality of their corresponding weapons. In other paintings, she portrayed human skulls against ornamental backgrounds made of roses, suns, stars, and bunnies to bring attention to the morbidity in their contrast.
Working with metallic renderings and a sober color palette, the artist depicted cameras, drones, and satellites as a commentary on surveillance culture in The Vision Machine, Shall You See Me Better Now?, held in 2015 at the Agial Gallery. The works in this exhibition investigate nation-states, corporations, and the blurred line between public and private space, augmenting and dissecting their subjects. Darghouth applies paint in thick impasto layers, favoring warm, muted colors over garish, violent hues. Her backgrounds consist of earthy tones and gestural, multidirectional brush strokes. She drips paint onto a wet canvas that she rotates herself, incorporating the element of chance into each work.
Tagreed Darghouth’s mentor, Marwan Kassab Bashi criticized her for this dripping technique, likening it to “a woman wearing a dress with her underskirt showing underneath,” though it developed into her signature.
An avid reader and researcher, Darghouth is inspired by thinkers such as Slavoj Zizek and Stephen Graham and regularly revisits works by old masters such as Rembrandt Van Rijn and Gustave Courbet, as well as modernists Chaim Soutine and Willem De Kooning. Building on Zizek’s writing about the Palestinian concept of steadfastness (Al-Sumud in Arabic), her latest exhibition Analogy to Human Life (2019) addresses the systematic uprooting of olive trees by Israeli Forces in occupied Palestine. The paintings contrast life and death by depicting trees with vibrant blue-green leaves alongside morbid chopped trunks. Within that same context, she illustrated bloody hunks of meat, drawing from Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox (1655).
Darghouth lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon.
Sources
"Canticle of Death: Tagreed Darghouth’s skulls at Agial." Beirut Art Critics. December 08, 2011. Accessed November 20, 2017. https://artsbeirut.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/canticle-of-death-tagreed-darghouths-skulls-at-agial/
KHALAF, Colette. "Vous me voyez, mais est-ce que vous m’entendez ? - Colette KHALAF." L'Orient-Le Jour. September 11, 2015. Accessed November 20, 2017. https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/943824/vous-me-voyez-mais-est-ce-que-vous-mentendez-.html
Simona Sikimic | The Daily Star. "Making art of the stuff of domestic servitude." The Daily Star Newspaper - Lebanon. Accessed November 20, 2017. http://www.dailystar.com.lb//Culture/Art/2010/Apr-02/119652-making-art-of-the-stuff-of-domestic-servitude.ashx
Tomb, Marie. War Identities.When Words Aren’t Enough. Human Rights Watch, Beirut, Lebanon, 53Dots. Pub., 2016.
"معرض بيروت للفن 2017 دورة النضج و... الـ «عروبة»!" الأخبار. Accessed November 20, 2017. http://www.al-akhbar.com/node/283469
"جائزة “مؤسسة بوغوصيان” لتغريد درغوث وباسكال هاشم." Naharashabab. July 12, 2012. Accessed November 21, 2017. https://naharashabab.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/%
Agial Art Gallery & Saleh Barakat Gallery - Darghouth, Tagreed. Accessed November 20, 2017. http://www.agialart.com/Artists/Details/18/Darghouth-Tagreed
Subtitled, With Narratives from Lebanon. Catalogue of the exhibition by APEAL at the Royal College of Art, London 3-6 November 2011
A recorded interview with the artist on 12thNovember 2017 – can be reached at DAF.
CV
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2019
Strange Fruit, Tabari Artspace, Dubai, UAE
2018
Analogy to Human Life, Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
A Second Coming, Beirut Art Residency, Beirut, Lebanon
2016
Ain’t Nowhere to Hide, Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait
2015
Vision Machines, Shall you see me better now, Agial Art Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2013
Rehearsals, Agial Art Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2011
Canticle of Death,Agial Art Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2010
Fair & Lovely, Agial Art Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2008
Mirror, Mirror!,Agial Art Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2006
Falling Parts, Goethe Institute, Beirut, Lebanon
2004
Still Features, Zico House, Beirut, Lebanon
Selected Group Exhibitions
2019
Arabicity|Ourouba, Middle East Institute Gallery, Washington, USA
Walking Through Walls, Groupius-Bau Museum, Berlin, Germany
Out of Context, Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2018
Face Value, Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
2017
Chefs d’Oeuvre de l’Art Moderne et Contemporain Arabe, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France
Ourouba: The Eye of Lebanon, BAF, curated by Rose Issa, Beirut, Lebanon
2016
Beloved Bodies, Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
Betasarof,Lebanese National Library, Beirut, Lebanon
2014
Thin Skin: six artists from Beirut, Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, USA
2013
Re-touch: New Paintings from Beirut, Forum for New Arab Art, Art-Lab, Berlin, Germany
2012
Re-Orientations II, Rose Issa Projects, London, UK
2011
Subtitled: With Narratives from Lebanon, Royal College of Art, London, UK
Rebirth, Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut, Lebanon
Residua, Maraya Art Centre, Al Qasba, Sharjah, UAE
2010
Mokhtarat, Ministry of Culture and Education, Doha, Qata
Connecting Heavens, Green Art Gallery, Dubai, UAE
10th Anniversary of Kasa Art Gallery, Kasa Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
2008
Bos Laf, Kasa Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey
AIWA: Aley International Artists Workshop, Aley, Lebanon
2006
Attribute to Senghor, Downtown, Beirut, Lebanon
Arteclassica, 3era,Feria de Arte, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2004
El Bab, Theatre de Beyrouth, Beirut, Lebanon
2003
Cerf Volants, Maison du Liban, CIUP, Paris, France
cm3, Cite International Universitaire De Paris, Paris, France
2001
Four Artists, Zara Art Gallery, Amman, Jordan
Ayloul's Summer Academy, Darat al Funoun, Amman, Jordan
2000
Ayloul's Summer Academy, Darat al Funoun, Amman, Jordan
1998
Creativity, Cultural Center of the South, Beirut, Lebanon
1997
Creativity, Cultural Center of the South, Beirut, Lebanon
Prizes
2012
The Boghossian Foundation Prize for her work ‘The English Rainbow’, Lebanon
2003
1stprize at cm3 by the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, France
2000
2ndprize of Darat al Funun’s Summer Academy, Jordan
Collections
Ramzi & Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon
The Mokbel Art Collection, Beirut, Lebanon
Barjeel Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE
Saradar Collection, Beirut, Lebanon
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