Conclusion

Summary

“All of these wars have had a profound impact on my life. By responding to war and violence through my work, I have the opportunity to bring before the public a visual transmission of personal emotions, experiences, and visions—to engage the viewer and establish a dialogue about art and the important issues affecting humanity.”

—Nabil Kanso, April 2009

Between War and Peace

At the core of Kanso's artistic practice is a steadfast belief in the possibility of change—in the certainty that we can do better, be better, and that futures full of peace and prosperity for every one of us is possible. He maintained this commitment throughout his lifetime, creating art that embodies it in defiance of those devoted instead to maintaining a status quo of protracted turmoil. His oeuvre swelled to take on accounts of many of the world's gravest atrocities, with series like The Split of Life offering a unique historical continuity, one that spans decades of both political and painterly movements and ruptures. It is a series he toured extensively across Latin America during Journey of Art for Peace and is one he came out of retirement to revisit in 2009 for one final exhibition in New York.

Organized less as a formal show and more as an archival opportunity, this artistic undertaking unfolded around a series of interviews conducted with Kanso before the paintings (Figure 4). It took as its focus the collective amnesia spawned across Lebanon by the Taif Agreement in 1990. With so much war-era pain and animosity still unresolved, tensions have threatened to simmer over into full-f ledged war ever since. An outbreak of militia-based conf lict in 2008 was, for example, reminiscent in scale and scope of the civil war, and made for a show that insisted on recounting political histories that so many in Lebanon are otherwise committed to forgetting. It is with Lebanon in the background of each frame that Kanso ref lected, at length, on these political agreements and abuses, all of which have so closely shaped both his life and oeuvre. Surrounded once more by his mobile murals, he narrated over four decades’ worth of political history through his art. Although recounted in succession, both his murals and commentary speak to a cyclical range of crises, all fought with so little regard for human life and loss.