Beirut Art Center’s exhibit 'Exposure 2011' brings fresh work from emerging artists to start the New Year. It’s the third installment to a series of shows featuring either Lebanese artists or non-Lebanese artists living in the country. No common theme ties their work except Lebanon. For the Beirut Art Center, which tends to eschew the curator, the collective show is a chance to see the space in action: an array of media from several artists, working to push the country’s art scene forward.

Much of the work takes advantage of our shared daily imagery, re-contextualizing the Lebanese quotidian. A work from Setareh Shahbazi’s Moonlight Boutique series depicts a garland of white flowers hanging – like a rosary – from a rearview mirror. The word ‘pure’ is strung on the garland, spelled out in a child’s beads. Franziska Pierwoss photographs the entrepreneurial transformation of a Toyota into a Mercedes Benz in your familiar Lebanese garage. The exposure might be of Lebanon.