A story can be told, and retold, in a number of ways—from a direct address recounting an embodied experience or by someone giving voice to another’s story, to its notation via pen on paper, embroidered thread on cloth, or paint on canvas. Through the act of storytelling, narratives migrate from person to person, one mother tongue to another, across forms, time and place. Within Mounira Al Solh’s practice, she traces the movement of stories to reflect upon her personal history and those of the people she encounters, and as a consideration of how social and political themes are grounded in daily life. While doing so she remains attentive to that fact that it is in the how you tell the story—through its inflections of humour and pathos, or flights of fiction and fantasy—that the meaning comes forth.

As one of four artists commissioned to produce new work for VII (2017–2018), Social Movement, Mounira Al Solh will further her interest in biography and oral histories as a means to think through the Lebanese Civil War and the contemporary Syrian conflict, employing the diverse mediums in which she works—video, performative gestures, painting and embroidery—to do so.

Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978, Beirut). Lives in Lebanon and The Netherlands.