Rêve Imaginaire — Brussels Writers Workshop

Rêve Imaginaire, Sabyl’s new show opening at Photo Image Gallery, Brussels, on March 11th, 2017 is all about never giving up hope, however unlikely and unattainable a dream might seem. Through the title he chose for his show, Sabyl warns us from the start that he neither deals with reality nor comments the news. The artist oscillates in an almost schizophrenic way between a world he created himself and a tragic reality he transcribes faithfully. Rather than provoke the viewer, he wants the latter to ask questions, to wonder and ponder.

Sabyl, presents us three of his series of photographs and a video.
In the first series, Rêve Imaginaire, the artist shows us individual portraits of a family, seated on a chair, immobile, the background is blue and their heads are completely wrapped up in a keffieh. The pose and background are reminiscent of both ID pictures taken at professional photo booths or the now sadly famous association of terror organisations’ victims’ last pleas on camera.
The symbolism of the veil is also striking as it has been the subject of numerous controversies in the last few years, notably in France where the artist grew up.

With this series, the artists wants to make the viewer more aware of how suffocating one’s identity can be. In this case, he uses the keffieh which is usually a symbol of pride but is seen here as an instrument of oppression as well. The people look like they could be the victims of their dreams.

The next series Shall we Dance shows us a utopian world in the form of a spectacular photo montage by the artist who has superimposed photos of youngsters dancing in Tel Aviv on photos of their counterparts dancing in Beirut. The youngsters and the scenes are so alike that it is impossible to distinguish which is Tel Aviv and which is Beirut, yet for all their similarities neither can dance in the other’s country.
The distance between Tel Aviv and Beirut is slightly more than the distance between Brussels and Paris.

The third series shows two self-portraits of the artist taken three years apart. In the first photo, he multiplies identities and religions by tripling himself as a priest, an imam and a rabbi. All three are seen sitting happily and peacefully on a bench, showing the viewer another side of a missed reality. In the second photo, taken three years later, the photographer takes his idea a step further. With the years, the bodies mingle and the borders disappear and are unified in one same body shown wearing the symbols of the three religions, hands lifted up in a universal praying gesture.

The last piece shows us a video called The Arab Spring of my Grand-Mother, another dual reality, another shattered dream, another undying hope for the future, the idea of continuity exemplified by the never-ending sea, yet the ever changing line of the horizon, and continuity through generations.

Sabyl currently lives between Batroun, Lebanon and Paris where he grew up, with his mother born in Lebanon and his father born in Ghana. His atypical course, led him to follow Fashion Studies, before moving on to Law School, followed by theatre classes where his main interest lay in directing, rather than acting.

In 2011, he became Director of the Lebanese Film Festival in Beirut. Since 2015, he has switched his focus on photography and writing. He writes for various publications, both on and off-line such as Orient XXI, Agenda Culturel and Tamyras. His photos and photo-reportages have been published in l'Oeil de la Photographie, the Guardian, Art Paper as well as Fotografia Magazine.

He is currently preparing a photo book with the Lebanese publishing house Tamyras while finishing his first novel.