ŠamaŠ Soleil noir soleil

Multidisciplinary artist and composer Zad Moultaka represented Lebanon at the 57th Venice Biennale. With his monumental work ŠamaŠ, Zad Moultaka combines musical inventiveness with artistic research in a radical approach where technology gives meaning to something archaic.

By making a monumental bomber engine sing and by placing it in front of a gleaming wall evocative of the golden calf, he uses a crepuscular, chanting relic to attempt to ward off the foretold Arab apocalypse. He confronts barbarity with his own weapons, making a vibrant appeal arising from a synergy of forms, materials and sounds.

This book, featuring gold embossing on a black cover, contains an introduction by exhibition curator Emmanuel Daydé, a text by Chris Wilson on the history of the Rolls Royce engine used in the installation and a text by the Lebanese author Issa Makhlouf placing the work in its historical perspective.