Walid Raad: Walkthrough (Collaborative, 4)

Walid Raad, is a Lebanese artist and founder of the fictional collective The Atlas Group whose work is concerned with researching, documenting and producing audio and visual installations that shed light on the contemporary history of Lebanon. Walid Raad’s work explores the line between fact and fiction and the understanding of the institution as the site of liberal truths. Raad’s body of work depicts his ambiguity as an artist. He uses installations, texts, performances and works on paper to explore the various truths of a story—possible, imaginable, and metaphoric- rather than the stricter measures of truth and fiction.

Walkthrough documents the results of Walid Raad’s summer school at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Italy, looking at his work as an exhibition of objects, stories, and documents, a mixture of fact-based research with poetic reflections on colors, lines and shapes, accompanied by a series of ‘walkthrough’ tours led by the artist. One of the pieces featured, Scratching on Things I Could Disavow, is a series of one-hour ‘walkthroughs’ for visitors guided by the artist through his installation of miniature artworks. The project revolves around the art history of the Arab world, its present and its future, and oscillates between fact and fiction, documentation and interpretation. Scratching on Things I Could Disavow is to some extent a research project that focuses on three areas—technological innovations in finance and their manifestations in art funds; the conditions for contemporary art in the Gulf region; the third concern is the effect that certain wars have had on culture and tradition, both materially and immaterially.

Walkthrough is a significant contribution to the understanding of Walid Raad’s creative process and looks at the collaborative nature of the workshops and the collective narrative that is created by his ‘walkthrough’ installations and as such provides an invaluable resource for students, curators and artists alike.