The Artsy Vanguard 2019: Simone Fattal
Simone Fattal by Kathleen Weaver. Courtesy of Gallery Tanit, Beirut.
In exile from her home in war-torn Lebanon, Simone Fattal found grace in literature and visual art. She settled in California in 1980, started The Post-Apollo Press, and wrote and distributed experimental poetry and fiction. When not writing or publishing, Fattal has pursued an expansive art practice that includes painting, collage, and sculpture. She may be best known for her ceramics, which suggest truncated human figures and archeological ruins—forms that seem to echo the destruction and violence of her past. A love for narrative is evident in Fattal’s visual work. Ruba Katrib, curator of “Works and Days,” the recently closed retrospective of Fattal’s work at MoMA PS1, remarked that the artist “reconsiders how stories are told.”
The show was her first-ever solo presentation at an American institution. “Simone Fattal’s work speaks volumes,” Katrib said. “She brings forth her deep research and dedication to history, philosophy, literature, and poetry into each piece that she makes.” Fattal, who is represented in Beirut by Galerie Tanit and in Milan and New York by Kaufmann Repetto, will have a show at the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art later this year.
