Picturing the (Un)Dead in Beirut - (Image) by Agnes Rameder (Paperback)

About the Book

Hauntings of the past and future that have effects on the present: Contemporary artistic reflections on the figure of the martyr in Lebanon.

Book Synopsis

Martyr posters are more than obituary images - they can act as visual politics. Focusing on Rabih Mroué's play How Nancy Wished That Everything Was an April Fool's Joke (2007), Agnes Rameder analyses how contemporary artists question and appropriate Lebanese martyr posters. By linking the posters from the Wars in Lebanon (1975-1990) to contemporary posters, she shows that these images continue to the present day, that martyrs are still created and that deaths, such as those who were killed in the explosion on 4 August 2020, are still visually remembered. This study does not focus on how such pictures are perceived by a Western audience but delves into the use and abuse of martyr posters that were intended to be shown to the Lebanese.

About the Author

Agnes Rameder completed her PhD at the department of art history at Universität Zürich in 2023. She wrote her MA thesis on contemporary photography in Tehran at Universität Wien. Her research interests and publications include the intersection of violence and images, political images, memory and photography, and the decolonization of art history. She has also worked as a freelance curator of contemporary art since 2017 and is assistant curator at Hamburger Bahnhof - National Gallery of Contemporary Art in Berlin.