Walid Raad: We Lived So Well Together

Kunsthalle Mainz hosts Walid Raad‘s solo exhibition We Lived So Well Together where the artist focuses on new works, exhibiting for the first time in Germany. Raad presents a collection of stories, documents and collages about how the world of birds, locusts, waterfalls, flowers, flies and other arthropods intersects with the history of the modern Middle East. Sometimes, behind the collages are illustrations of the code names given to various foreign heads of state such as Saddam Hussein and Ronald Reagan.

Walid Raad is known for his performances, installations, videos and photographs. His works engage art and its histories, global conflicts and Lebanese civil wars with beautiful and highly processed images and captivating stories.

He delicately leans on historical and/or fictional objects, exposing explicit and implicit forms of violence hidden within them. He somehow penetrates a vast system of passages linking continents, people, acts of war and natural disasters. The documents, artefacts and narratives he creates start from seemingly personal stories, but soon unfold to connect to issues of global finance, geopolitical conflicts and counterintuitive otherworldly phenomena.

As part of the exhibition, Walid Raad will conduct tours – entitled Walkthroughs – in the Kunsthalle Mainz in the first and last week of the exhibition.