Lebanese visual artist Dima Hajjar pursues her exploration on social and identity issues with her latest exhibition, ‘Sky under surveillance’, currently showing at Janine Rubeiz gallery. As usual, Hajjar tackles subjects related to her own background – as an Arab woman artist – using objects from public and personal life. Questioning the background issue has led her to diversify her media in a very particular way; in ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe selon Manet’, she reinterpreted the French painter’s work, transforming trees into menacing bombs and characters into ghostly figures. In ‘Scènes de Vie’, she explored the process of the construction and the deconstruction of a canvas, turning a painting into an installation – to her point of view, artistic works should be permanently destroyed and rebuilt, according to the context. In her recent photographic project, ‘La Dentellière Desk Chair XVIème Trilogy’, Hajjar involved Vermeer’s ‘Lacemaker’, which she set in a context of war, conflict, then reconstruction, all the while attempting to knit the fragments of her identity. ‘Sky under Surveillance’ works on lights fluctuations. In the new Janine Rubeiz gallery, filled with bright light coming through the glass roof, the artist installed non-stop monitoring cameras recording the random appearances of shadows on the wall, by day and by night. On the same wall, the artist projects her paintings, representing sky balconies peeling off, shattering ceilings and destroyed pillars that compose changing shadows under the sky. With ‘Sky under surveillance’, Hajjar proved how she excels in the art of turning the everyday life into fiction.

Janine Rubeiz Gallery. Tue-Fri 10am-3pm. Until Fri 19.