Based in Beirut and Paris, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (both b. 1969) are artists of the moving image whose work exists at the intersection of cinema and the art world, as well as that of documentary and fiction, just as their native Lebanon exists at the heart of Mediterranean geography—where the Arab world meets Europe—and at the intersection of the urgency of the present and the weight of colonial history.

They began their work as artists and filmmakers in the early 1990s as Lebanon’s fifteen-year civil war came to an end. To Hadjithomas and Joreige, it seemed as if the society around them wanted to ignore the destruction that had thoroughly disrupted the life and culture of the entire country.  Hadjithomas and Joreige wondered how images could be made to register the aftermath of catastrophe and loss, especially since so much of the violence had occurred invisibly, through the disappearance of thousands of civilians kidnapped by the various warring militias and never seen again. And thus began a body of work that seeks to point out gaps and absences on the one hand while also looking to the past for indications of a way forward.

Though mourning and violence were at the genesis of their image-making, the work of Hadjithomas and Joreige also exists as part of the recent international turn toward the archive as both a source of images and a resource to be investigated. Both their rigor and sense of play are evident in their installation work, involving photographs, artifacts and moving images, which has been shown in galleries and museums around the world, including Paris, London, San Francisco and Tokyo. Their films mix documentary and fiction in exciting and unpredictable ways while exhibiting an understanding of mise-en-scène, framing and editing that is truly cinematic. – David Pendleton

The HFA is pleased to present a retrospective of their films to coincide with the opening of the exhibit I Must First Apologize… at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, on display from February 19 to April 17, 2016. The culmination of a major project by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, this exhibition presents a body of work that looks at the history of online spam and scamming through film, sculpture, photography, and installation. For more infornation visit the website.