Scratching onThings I Could Disavow: Index XXVI _ Red, 2011

If in the contexts of Europe, America and Asia, art has become a significant cog in economic growth, it is necessary to see how this actually fits in the Arab world. For his theoretical basis, Raad borrows reflections on forgetting tradition from one of his references, the Lebanese essayist, film theorist and video artist Jalal Toufic. In A History of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art he includes photographs, festival and gallery catalogues, art publications, museum proposals, an index of artists and heterogeneous data on the art market in the Middle East on a white wall that simulates a broken wall. The first presentation of the project took place in 2008 in the Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut. Subsequently, specific sections and installations of the work have been presented in Hamburg, New York, London, Como, Los Angeles, Paris, Sharjah (UAE), Brussels, Berlin, Vienna and Kassel (Germany).

The MACBA installation presents painters and sculptors who worked in Lebanon during the twentieth century. A History of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art: Part I_ Chapter 1 (Beirut, 1992–2005): Index XXVI, Artists, Broken Wall-Johnny Tahhan contains the names of over 950 artists from Beirut during the last hundred years. The names were printed on white vinyl on a white wall in a long straight line of 22 metres. Above, Raad places a collage with press cuttings from the time where some artists and other elements appear, with a special emphasis on Jean Tafan or Johnny Tahhan (born in Egypt in 1930 and died in Beirut in 1989), as already indicated in the title installation. Raad incorporates letters signed by this artist, who spent many years in a wheelchair, recovered illustrations, press cuttings, slides of his works and other items. The name of Jean Tafan is written in Arabic script in red.

As for the list of names that runs along the wall, the fact they have been printed in white on white makes them formally appear and disappear from the wall and, conceptually, refers to a supposed telepathic communication with the information we receive from the past. Walid Raad explains that the artists of the last hundred years have been sending these names to him by telepathy.