Live streaming link:
https://maxweberstiftung-oi-beirut.webex.com/maxweberstiftung-oi-beirut/j.php?MTID=mf4a2b5ebd9fd5ff1a79932910287d030>

LAWHA link:
https://lawha.hypotheses.org/1104

LAWHA/OIB in collaboration with the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Global (De)Centre is happy to invite you to join us for a public panel discussion on “Curating an artist’s (and parent’s) biography”, with Mahita El Bacha Urieta, Manuella Guiragossian and Hala Schoukair in conversation with Nadia von Maltzahn. 

The daughters of Amine El Bacha (1932-2019), Paul Guiragossian (1926-1993) and Saloua Raouda Choucair (1916-2017) – leading artists of Lebanon’s art world – will talk about the responsibility of taking care of their parent’s legacy, what challenges they face in organizing an artist estate in Lebanon and what it means to curate a biography that is intrinsically linked to their own.

This is the final event of the Moving Biography Summer School that took place in June 2022, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

About the speakers

Mahita El Bacha Urieta 

A curator and cultural design and policy specialist working internationally for over 25 years, Mahita El Bacha Urieta has recently retrained as a psychotherapist and life coach, and runs her private practice out of Madrid, Spain. She is one of Lebanese artist Amine El Bacha’s three daughters, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Amine El Bacha Foundation, which is responsible for the management and promotion of the late artist’s estate.

Manuella Guiragossian

Born in Lebanon, Manuella Guiragossian  received her earliest training in her father’s studio, the renowned artist Paul Guiragossian. She held her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1989 and went on to graduate from the California Institute of the Arts in 2002 with a BFA in Film and Video, specializing in Character Animation. Manuella has exhibited her works globally for over three decades. After her father’s passing in 1993, she began researching and archiving his life and works. In 2011, she founded the Paul Guiragossian Foundation with her family, of which she has been the president ever since. The foundation aims to promote and preserve the legacy of Paul Guiragossian’s work through exhibitions and publications and collaborates with other cultural organizations and institutions worldwide to showcase Guiragossian’s contribution in the development of art in Lebanon and the Middle East.

Hala Schoukair

Having grown up in Beirut, Hala Schoukair went on to receive a master’s degree in Cinematographic Studies from the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1981. She lived in Beirut from 1983-1987, where she worked in film production and window dressing. Later, she moved to the United States and became a visual artist, with solo exhibitions in Beirut and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. Hala is the daughter of the pioneer abstract artist Saloua Raouda Choucair and chairs a foundation that commemorates her mother’s art and legacy.

Find us on Google Maps