the bitter watches of the self tagreed darghouth he Mona Lisa is not the only portrait whose eyes follow you. Amidst numerous paintings of bandaged women and men hanging in Beirut’s Agial Art Gallery, the woman in Tagreed Darghouth’s Before follows me ceaselessly. My eyes dart from portraits of puffy-faced girls with gauzed noses to swollen- faced women with black strips covering their eyes. The woman in Before is still following me. There are young men with plasters on their noses and female torsos that feature reconstructed breasts or thick black marker pen lines drawn on body parts ready for liposuction. All of the portraits are painted in a thick impasto, almost like a metaphor for the emotional layers involved in having plastic surgery. Only the woman in Before is void of any trace of surgical invasiveness and had she not sat among an ostensible ‘recovery room’ full of post-op patients, it would be hard to guess that she is precisely where her counterparts were: in those restless pre-op instants when all one does is re- question what brought them there for physical change. “That is precisely my point,” says Darghouth, “that internal fear or anxiety which they have will always remain. Plastic surgery won’t change that, not before and not after.” We do not know if the woman in Before is staring at her naked self in her bathroom mirror or if she is staring back at the plastic surgeon as she is being examined. Either way, she seems at her most vulnerable, most desperate, helpless moment. It would be easy to impose possible narratives – she may want to keep her midlife crisis at bay or even that of her husband’s, she may be a widow keen to start afresh, she may want to maintain her youth or her husband may have left her for a younger woman... But narratives are what powerful artworks are meant to provoke. “I always want to leave it up to the viewer to decide,” smiles Darghouth. As viewers, we don’t even know which body part the lady in Before is keen on changing but what we do have is an insight into the emotional struggle that she is battling within. “We are vulnerable to this fear at all times,” adds Darghouth, adamant that plastic surgery cannot free a person of this “riddling, innate, inflicted fear.” The charged words of JFK ring in – ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ and the fear, Darghouth believes, is created and propelled by the media. “We’re always being fuelled by thoughts and images that the good life is synonymous with beauty and we are told that achieving beauty means having plastic surgery.” profile T E X T B Y M Y R N A A Y A D P H O T O G R A P H Y B Y M A N S O U R D I B A N D I M A G E S C O U R T E S Y O F A G I A L A R T G A L L E R Y Lebanese-born Tagreed Darghouth proved that ‘beauty knows no pain’ in her groundbreaking Mirror, Mirror! series, which tackled aspirations of beauty against suggestive societal norms. In her upcoming series, Fair & Lovely , she poses the question: whose hand rocks the cradle? “We’re always being fuelled by thoughts and images that the good life is synonymous with beauty and we are told that achieving beauty means having plastic surgery.” Opening spread: Untitled. 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 100 x 150 cm. Facing Page: Before . 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 100 x 80 cm. Private Collection, Dubai. 139 Eye of the Beholder When Darghouth exhibited her (ongoing) plastic surgery series Mirror, Mirror! in July 2008 at Agial, shockwaves reverberated in the Lebanese capital’s press and among some members of its collector base. Local media reprimanded her tackling of “very dark issues” while one collector “who had had a lot of plastic surgery done, complained to the gallery and claimed that I was cornering her in a sense!” laughs Darghouth. Whatever the whys and wherefores, Mirror, Mirror! sold out and gave Darghouth a morale boost as well as the financial opportunity to simply “buy additional and better materials to paint more.” The majority of works exhibited focused on people who had just had plastic surgery – it wasn’t a body of work filled with people in agonising pain, stitched up and covered in bandages, but rather, a body of work that encapsulated the emotional unknown following plastic surgery. “I wanted to capture them in these moments of anxiety and fear, as they’re healing and don’t know if the surgery has been a success. It’s a chance they’ve taken on their faces and bodies, and this is when they question: is it worth all this physical and emotional pain?” Granted, plastic surgery may be sensitive to tackle, not least for some of Darghouth’s graphic post-op portrayals, but perhaps also because Lebanon is socially positioned as a plastic surgery hotbed and some of its nationals don’t want to see a reflection of that in the art world. “Still,” stresses Darghouth, “it is a topic that is relevant to the Lebanese and has become a trend that people orient to, regardless of whether they need it or not.” If not relevant to now, one might ask, then what is Contemporary art if not a documentation of the here and now? Where her Contemporary counterparts Walid Raad ( Canvas 5.2), Akram Zaatari ( Canvas 6.1), Ayman Baalbaki ( Canvas 5.2), Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, among others, deal with the infrastructural and conceptual ramifications following the wars in Lebanon, Darghouth deals with social issues that hark back to the populace’s physical and emotional requirements. That is a concept which while local, can be easily broadened to a global perspective. “In fact,” adds Darghouth, “all of my portraits are inspired by images I find on the Internet and local and international magazines and newspapers.” Sometimes, random people give her their images, as in the case of an 18-year-old girl who was given a nose-job as a birthday present by her mother. “That was just plain shameful,” says Darghouth, disgruntled, “this is a young woman whose life ambition was to marry someone rich, and despite not having fully matured physically, is not mature about her body, let alone making a decision like this!” It would be almost fair to say that after the patient and the plastic surgeon, Darghouth is the third person who knows the patient’s face all too well. Having stared at and pondered hundreds of faces, Darghouth can now “immediately” tell if someone has had plastic surgery. “Something in their anatomy tells me and when I choose the faces, I look at them and see if there is a connection between the face and myself and whether I would like to work on that face,” she says. So is Darghouth for or against plastic surgery? “I didn’t want my opinion on plastic surgery to come through in my artworks,” she admits, “I wanted to be objective, like a journalist, albeit reporting figuratively, but it was only after I worked on this subject that I realised I am against it.” profile “I wanted to capture them in these moments of anxiety and fear, as they’re healing and don’t know if the surgery has been a success. It’s a chance they’ve taken on their faces and bodies, and this is when they question: is it worth all this physical and emotional pain?” Previous spreads: Left: Tarek. 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 200 x 150 cm. Private Collection, Dubai. Right: Leen. 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 200 x 150 cm. Private Collection, Dubai. Facing Page: Are you Ready? 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 180 x 150 cm. 142 “I am also exposing how we never ask ourselves how they [helpers] are, especially as we are entrusting our children in their care.” Who Pulls The Strings? Initially planning on a degree in interior design, Darghouth spontaneously penned in ‘drawing’ during registration at the Lebanese University’s Institute of Fine Arts. “I was thrilled as it had never occurred to me that I wanted to do this!” she says excitedly. After graduating with a BA in 2000, she completed another year of art school at the École Nationale Superieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris in 2003, having studied French beforehand. In the summers of 2000 and 2001, Darghouth attended workshops at Amman’s Darat Al-Funun, working under famed Syrian/German artist Marwan ( Canvas 4.6) and producing works of an Abstract colour combination. In 2004, she exhibited the works done at Darat Al-Funun at Beirut’s Zico House, a grassroots cultural platform, and then approached the city’s Goethe Institute, where she exhibited her first series, Falling Parts in March 2006. It was there that Darghouth was discovered by Saleh Barakat, Agial’s founder, who signed her onto the gallery’s impressive roster of artists. “Saleh encourages me all the time and takes a risk in showing young artists,” she smiles, discussing her contemporaries, [Ayman] Baalbaki and Oussama Baalbaki who have both been featured at Dubai Christie’s auctions and are fast becoming rising stars. Falling Parts featured paintings of dolls that implied the notion of ageing as something irrevocable, stretching the metaphor to an allegory – these dolls were likened to those who feel weak or fragile at certain times in their life. At the same time, Darghouth’s intention was to draw an obscure parallel to the wars in Lebanon through her disfiguration of the dolls – something the local media caught onto quickly, dubbing them “aggressive” and claiming that Falling Parts focused solely on conflict. “Dolls are like us, except on a smaller scale,” says Darghouth, “they are objects you can destroy, throw around, love or enjoy just as humans do to each other and this doll cannot react or refuse what is happening to her.” The immediate conclusion one might draw is that Darghouth experienced some misfortune in her 30-year-old life. “Not at all,” she smiles, “now that I feel independent and happy, I look around and see how others fear age.” This inextricable notion no doubt contributed to the concept of the Mirror, Mirror! series, which in turn has led to Darghouth’s latest series, Fair & Lovely – a collection tackling domestic helpers and how they have become the proverbial ‘hand that rocks the cradle’. Taking its name from a skin-whitening cream popular among South East Asian and African communities, Fair & Lovely is derived from Darghouth’s belief in a subject that is “neglected on social and governmental levels.” Aside from this disregard is Darghouth’s delving into societal attitudes towards house-helpers and nannies, down to the derogatory words associated with them – ‘ ’abdi ’ (slave), ‘ san’aa ’ (maid) or ‘ khadmi ’ (servant). “I am also exposing how we never ask ourselves how they are, especially as we are entrusting our children in their care,” she says. Just as Before can be read outside the context of plastic surgery, so too can Ceila Holding the Baby, which features only a pair of arms holding a child and another untitled work in which the baby is replaced with a puppy. “I see some [helpers] walking dogs in the afternoon and I feel, well maybe she needs a break!” exclaims Darghouth. No doubt when Fair & Lovely is shown on 25 March at Agial, it will do more than raise a few eyebrows. Perhaps it will do precisely what the Mona Lisa does: astound, but mesmerise you with her expression. Tagreed Darghouth’s Fair & Lovely will show at Agial from 25 March−17 April. For more information visit www.agialart.com profile Previous spreads: Left: The Runaways. 2009–10. Acrylic on costume fabric laid on canvas. 135 x 105 cm (45 x 35 cm each). Right: Moulou Holding the Baby. 2010. Acrylic on costume fabric laid on canvas. 120 x 100 cm. Facing page: Flora Holding the Baby. 2010. Acrylic on costume fabric laid on canvas. 120 x 100 cm. 147