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Installation by Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza
No Vacancy
The Last Days of the Carlton
لا شواغر

آخر أيام الكارلتون
October 11 – December 19, 2011 @ The Hangar | Beirut


The Beirut Carton Hotel is not a non-place, as Marc Augé might have referred to it. It is a space with a historical identity, bearing significance in relation to the urban fabric of Beirut, as the artist revealed through an interpretation of the traces left by the hotel's archive. 

Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza was interested in the illegibility of the visible and the invisible that becomes legible, which is contained in the text and images that she selected. Personifying the documents, she visually transformed the hotel's archive into a testimony of lived experience. The work aimed to provoke remembrance, to extract a fragment of feeling that even the most basic of words can contain. Yet the material the artist chose to work with was precarious, fragile, not conducive to conversation in time. She played on the relation between appearance and disappearance, endowing the often minor and fleeting traces of memory with magic, poetry, and infinite possibility.

"No Vacancy" was part of the larger exhibition "The Beirut Experience," running at the Beirut Art Center. Curated and produced by "attitudes," Geneva. The Beirut Experience brought together ten international artists selected for their interest in notions that are essential to the dual contexts of Beirut and Lebanon. These included architecture, urban planning, memory, history or cultural identity, as well as their capacity to adapt to the complex but stimulating Lebanese situation.

This installation was made possible thanks to the institutional support from the Embassy of Denmark in Lebanon.


Photo Gallery
From the Opening
From the Opening From the Opening From the Opening From the Opening From the Opening From the Opening
From the Exhibition
From the Exhibition From the Exhibition From the Exhibition From the Exhibition From the Exhibition From the Exhibition

In the Media
November 11, 2011 | Agenda Culturel
«No Vancancy» au Hangar
October 14, 2011 | L'Orient Le Jour
«No Vacancy» pour le travail de mémoire
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