Préface à la troisième édition

WALID RAAD, born in Chbaniyeh, Lebanon, in 1967, works on the possibilities of constructing history, offering alternatives to universal reason through the constant flow of images and discourses. His practice is constituted as an intensification of the concepts of labyrinth and rhizome: making use of an interwoven structure, Raad produces works that present a collection of documents - present in archives or produced by the artist himself - that allow us to glimpse new perspectives on a world to come.
In Préface à la troisième édition (2013), the artist presents a combination of images generated from the superimposition of photographs taken by Hughes Dubois for the catalog Les Arts de l'Islam au Musée du Louvre, published in 2012. Raad creates images that establish the relationships between the objects presented, questioning the ways of seeing that characterize the so-called "Islamic arts." The artist's work, therefore, promotes a fissure in the categorizations that structure hegemonic narratives.