Tamara Kalo was the selected artist for the first round of six open calls: 24/7 VIDEO. Her work Shattered Horizon was displayed in our vitrine from November 23 until December 3.

The jury was comprised of artists Nour Debian, Mayssa Khoury, Ieva Saudargaitė Douaihi, anthropologist Marc Ghazali, and contemporary art curator Marie-Nour Héchaimé.

SHATTERED HORIZON - This performative piece, shot in California soon after the August 4th Beirut blast, touches on processes of destruction, loss, grief and survivor’s guilt. It stems from a diasporic longing to help from afar, after witnessing a tragedy in one’s homeland through screens from the comfort and discomfort of being in a distant reality. It contrasts the momentary happening of destruction with the incalculable time of recovery. It depicts the conflicting and gendered roles we play in trying to make sense of times of crisis, and the fragility of our virtual processing of news.

TAMARA KALO - (born in Saida, 1994) is an interdisciplinary artist - Lebanese-French & Riyadh-raised. She is formally trained in architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. She incorporates light- and time-based media such as photography, video, sculpture and performance to investigate narratives that shape home, displacement and identity. She touches on the boundaries of dichotomies and the spaces in between, such as public and private, comfort and discomfort. Her practice is informed by embodied knowledge and guided by research to reframe landscapes, whether internal or external, through fragmentation and seriality. By juxtaposing familiar materials and objects, she seeks to represent the fragility of what lies between a moment in time and place and its memory.

This open call has been made possible with the generous support of the BERYT project, which is led by UN-habitat through funding from the Lebanon Financing Facility (LFF) that is administered by the World Bank (WB). The cultural and Creative Industries component is implemented by UNESCO Beirut.