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Hiba Kalache

Hiba Kalache is a Lebanese artist whose practice encompasses installation, drawing, painting and sculpture. She draws her materials (food, glass, wire, etc.), her process and her inspiration from everyday life. Kalache questions the separation between the private and public spheres, and more specifically what she calls "the banality of daily rituals", as well as the definition of "home" and social belonging.

She has recently turned her attention to the relationship between texts and images. Produced at a time of prolonged socio-historical and existential crisis, this work is in tune with the times: it exposes our ambivalent desires with regard to present-day reality, at once fantasy and living nightmare. The gesture is fragile, intimate and intuitive, the work luminous and full of rage. Kalache wiped the streets with her canvases during the uprising that lasted several months from October 17, 2019, and the resulting marks were then mixed with charcoal and colored inks.

In Kalache's work, desire is represented by partial erotic motifs (belly, breast, phallus, toe, thigh, anus and eye...) that the viewer sees or doesn't see, depending on his or her mood. Oscillating between automatism and intention, his brushstrokes evoke rays of sunlight or stains of excrement. Thus, what was briefly beautiful now appears distorted.

Biography

Hiba Kalache is a Lebanese artist born in 1972. She lives and works in Beirut.

TRAINING

  • 2005 / MFA, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
  • 1992 / DEP, Metal Arts School of Montreal, Montreal, Canada.
  • 1992 / CGA, Canadian Gemmological Association, Toronto, Canada.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS - SELECTION

  • 2018 / Lemonade Everything Was So Infinite, Saleh Barakat Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2012 / Alternate Worlds, The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2012 / Under a Beautiful Sky, FFA Private Bank, with The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, in collaboration with Nada Boulos El Assaad, Beirut, Lebanon

GROUP EXHIBITIONS - SELECTION

  • 2018 / the horror, the horror, the horror, Harald Szeemann and the Archive, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2017 / Beirut Art Fair, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2015 / HeartLand, Beirut Exhibition Center, with Joanna Chevalier and Nadine Saddi Zaccour, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2014 / Art Dubai, Dubai, UAE
  • 2013 / Journeys Through our Heritage, in collaboration with Janine Maamari and Marie Tomb, Beirut Exhibit Center, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2013 / Art Dubai 2013, with The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Dubai, UAE
  • 2013 / Drawing Now Paris 2013, with The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Paris, France
  • 2012 / Watercolor Biennial 2012, Alfredo Guati Rojo National Watercolor Museum, Mexico City
  • 2012 / Seeing is Believing, Standard Chartered Auction, Dubai, UAE
  • 2012 / Art Gwangju 2012, with The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Gwangju, South Korea
  • 2012 / Art is the Answer!, curated by Diane Hennebert, Villa Empain, The Boghossian Foundation, Brussels, Belgium
  • 2012 / Art Dubai, Dubai, UAE
  • 2011 / Rebirth, Beirut Exhibition Center, curated by Janine Maamari in cooperation with Daniele Giraudy, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2011 / In the Trenches, The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2010 / Slick Art Fair Paris, with The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Paris, France
  • 2010 / Bastakiya Art Fair, with The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Dubai, UAE
  • 2010 / Counting Thoughts, curated by Mayssa Fattouh, The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2010 / Soft Sculpture, or The Ordinary Interpreted, The Running Horse Contemporary Art Space, Beirut, Lebanon
  • 2008 / Urban Jealousy, curated by Serhat Koksal and Amirali Ghasemi, Tehran Roaming International Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey; Berlin, Germany; and Belgrade, Serbia
  • 2007 / Minor Encounters, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA
  • 2006 / Some of These Things are Beautiful, site specific installation of the Arc Collective, Oakland, CA
  • 2005 / Sweet and Spicy, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
  • 2005 / Graduate Open Studios, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA
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