Lamia Joreige (b. 1972) is a visual artist and film-maker who lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon. She earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied painting and film-making. She uses archival documents and elements of fiction to reflect on history and its possible narration, and on the relationship between individual stories and collective memory. Her practice, rooted in her country’s experience, explores the possibilities of representing the Lebanese wars and their aftermath, particularly in Beirut, a city at the center of her imagery. Her work is essentially on time, the recordings of its trace, and its effects on us.
Joreige’s artworks, which include drawings, paintings, sculptures and large scale multimedia installations, were presented at various international exhibitions and venues, including: Centre Pompidou, le 104, and Musée Nicéphore Niépce in France; Liverpool Biennial, Tate Modern, Serpentine Gallery and Cardiff National Museum in the U.K.; MAXXI, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Venice Biennial in Italy; Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute and Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography, the New Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Taymour Grahne Gallery in the US; Berlin Biennial in Germany; Istanbul Biennial and Arter in Turkey; Sharjah Biennial in the UAE, Mathaf in Qatar and the NES pavilion at the National Museum and Marfa gallery in Lebanon.
She has written, directed and produced various short essay-films and one feature narrative, which were presented in festivals and venues among which: Medfilm Festival, Rome (Awarded Best film); FID Marseille; Les Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin; Paris Cinema; The Mediterranean Festival of Cinema, Montpellier; Home Works I, IV & VII (Ashkal Alwan), Festival du film libanais and Beirut Cinema Days in Beirut.
Her first monograph, Lamia Joreige: Works 1994-2017, was published by Kaph Books in 2018. ‘Records for Uncertain Times’ published by Taymour Grahne Gallery in 2015. She is the author of ‘Under-Writing Beirut —Mathaf (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2013) ; ‘Time and the Other' (Alarm Editions, 2004) and 'Ici et peut-être ailleurs' (Haus Der Kulturen der Welt, 2003). She has contributed writings and visual essays to various art periodicals such as TDR (MIT press Journal), Kamel Lazaar Foundation Projects, Apexart, Afterall online magazine, Sarai Reader 7, Art Journal, Art Forum, and Camera Austria.
Her work is part of the following collections: Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP), France; Tate Modern, London; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Saradar Collection, Beirut; Koç Foundation, Turkey; MATHAF, Doha; Ars Aevi collection for Sarajevo Contemporary Art Museum; Nicéphore Niépce Museum, Chalon-sur-saône, France; Fond Régional d’Art Contemporain, (FRAC) Bretagne, France.
Lamia Joreige was a fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris (Columbia University) in 2021, and a fellow at The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (Harvard University) in 2016–2017. She is a co-founder and board member of Beirut Art Center, which she co-directed from 2009 to 2014.