Archives of No Place: The Frivolous Line in Mounira Al Solh’s Portraiture

In 2012, the Lebanese multimedia artist Mounira Al Solh began her ongoing series, I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous. This work composes a growing collection of pen and ink portraits made on yellow legal pad and other loose papers. Currently about 500 in number, these sketched line drawings reflect on intimate conversations that Al Solh shared with Syrian emigrants and others who have been forcibly displaced. A book of anecdotes from these conversations, translated into English, accompanies the drawings as an adjacent piece to the exhibit. This series began as a relief to the backlash and racism against Syrians exiled to Lebanon at the beginning of the Syrian Civil War in 2011. The Lebanese government refused the formal support of humanitarian camps, ghettoizing emigrants inside local communities, just as with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon for at least the last half-century.