Signifying Bodies: Artistic Representations of Embodiments in the Works of Samir Khaddaje, Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh

This essay highlights and examines a number of works by the artists Samir Khaddaje, Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh that present and represent different forms of embodiment: the body pillar, the body ghost, the body in ruin, and the body battlefield. The inquiries of the artists draw on a number of underlays that characterize the contexts the works stem from, contexts that belong to different periods in time, yet present a number of common characteristics in which violence and silence are dominant. The works converge in both their sharing of the same topos: the body, and in their thinking about the meaning of the individual, the human being. The topos of the body allows them to anchor and exceed any given certitude about the individual, and exposes the fact that it is a reliable site despite, and maybe because of, its ability to encompass paradoxes.