Simone Fattal’s itinerant biography is marked by fault lines, all of which have shaped her prolific artistic practice of nearly fifty years. Growing up amidst both the extensive heritage of the historical region of Syria and Lebanon and the tumultuous aftermath of the Franco-British partition of the Ottoman Empire, she encountered from an early age the clash between the timeless knowledge of ancient civilizations and the scars of war in her homeland. Fattal studied philosophy in Beirut and in Paris in the 1960s, where she later attended archaeology classes, and delved into publishing and sculpture after relocating to Sausalito, California, in 1980, during the upheaval of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90). With an insatiable curiosity for antiquity and modern history and informed by gender politics, Fattal has defied both conventional categorizations of artistic media and cultural identity. For her exhibition The Manifestations of the Voyage, she has created a new body of work that explores the contemporary human condition and our fragile relationship to nature by finding inspiration in the mythological figures of the ancient past. Highlighting the interconnectedness between the written word and visual forms of expression, the presentation at Portikus gives equal prominence to Fattal’s simultaneous practice as an artist and publisher by dedicating a reading room to a comprehensive selection of books released by The Post-Apollo Press (1982–2017), that can be read on site.
