mine

Growing up in Beirut during Lebanon's 15-year-long civil war, Annabel Daou had access to many works of literature, including English publications, thanks to her parents’ bookstore. In 1985, Daou moved to New York and began studying visual arts at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her artistic production encompasses a variety of media such as text-based drawings, sound and performance works, along with videos and installations that employ numbers, words, phrases, fragments of sentences, and quotations. The artist explores the relationship between language and meaning, focusing on understanding and misunderstanding, and the distinction between the self and the other.

"mine" is a piece made by using pieces of Sunn hemp paper, vellum, and fragments of various types of Japanese paper. Daou assembles her work with the help of document repair tape on which she has written words in lightfast ink. The artist writes down what she owns on these papers. Besides material things like “my bird cage”, this textual sum also includes immaterial entries, such as “my decision”. Inviting the audience to consider the plurality and fragility of a person’s integral being, the work also raises questions concerning belongings, as well as emotional and cognitive ways of building relations.