Ahmad Ghossein
b. 1981, Lebanon
Ahmad Ghossein is an artist and a filmmaker. He holds an MFA in Visual Art from the National Academy of Art-(KHIO) in Oslo and a BFA in Theater from the Lebanese University, Beirut. His practice utilizes a number of media, including video art, installation, art in public spaces and film. The starting point of his work stems from the collecting and analyzing of facts, documents, and found footage and materials, which then feed into a body of work that draws on the potentialities of the moving image, he is interested in the connection between individual human experiences and shared historical and political realities. It is driven by personal and emotional experience, but is essentially concerned with the larger political face of his time.
His art works include:
There is No Right or Wrong here/Solo exhibition/2017/Marfa Gallery Beirut, The Fourth Stage –
Lebanon/2015/film/ Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation, when The Ventriloquist came
and spoke to me, Performance, Homeworks7, Beirut. Relocating the Past, Ruins for the
Future – Norway/2013/a public space project, You have to Swim, You have no Choice – Lebanon
and Norway/2012/Video/ Commissioned and nominated for the DnB Nor Sparebank
Foundation Exhibition 2012, Oslo Art Association. Yesterday’s News- Solo exhibition-
Kunstforening/2012/Oslo. This is not the news of today – Norway/2012/Video
Ghossein’s feature film debut All This Victory, 2019, won the Grand Prize and the Audience Award at the Venice International Film Critics's Week. His short film, White Noise, which was
produced under the auspices of “Lebanon Factory,” opened the Director’s Fortnight of the Cannes Film Festival (La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs – Cannes) 2017. His Video work My father Is Still a Communist, 2011, commissioned by Sharjah at foundation was awarded best short film in Tribeca Doha Film Festival 2011 and was selected by MoMa and Berlinale and several festivals. His other short The Fourth Stage opened the Forum Expanded of the Berlinale Film Festival, Berlinale 2016. He was the co- artistic director of Beirut art center (2020-2021).
Ahmad has directed several documentaries, short films. Other works include: The Last Cartographer in the Republic (2017), Time out, feature documentary, Aljazeera channel (2016) An Arab Comes to Town (2008), a documentary filmed in Denmark produced by DR2. He was awarded the Production Programme Award by the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2014, the Ibsen scholarship award in 2013, and the Art Residency, Inclusartiz institution, Rio de Janeiro, 2018.
Ghossein’s work has been exhibited in different museums and galleries and has been screened in various film festivals around the world that including, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa)
and New Museum in New York, Sharjah Biennial 12 and 10 by Sharjah Art Foundation, Center Pompidou in Paris, Oslo Kunstforening, Kunsthall in Oslo, With Koro (Uro) in Oslo, AshkalAlwan’s Home Works in Beirut, SeMA Biennale Mediacity Seoul, Nam June Paik Art Center in South Korea, Mucem museum in Marseille, Videobrazil 21 st Biennial, Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen, the Bétonsalon in Paris, the Haus am Waldsee art space in Berlin, Berlinale Film Festival, Dubai Film Festival, Oberhausen Film Festival, and the Fid Marseille Film Festival.