The exhibition « Carousel » took place in Villa Paradiso in Gemmayzé until the 19th of June, with the willingness to present a Lebanese house full of memories as well as paintings from the British artist Tom Young.
When he first saw this old manor house in Gemmayzé during the night of the 1st of January 2013, the artist Tom Young fell in love with its walls covered with jasmine and its traditional architecture, a mix of Ottoman and French mandate styles. He then contacted the owners of the place (which has been empty for 38 years), the Feghalis, to propose them to renovate the house and create an exhibition place, first with his paintings and then to be led as the family wishes. The family accepted with joy and Tom Young's adventure of discovering and sketching the place began.
The former owners of the place were an Armenian family, the Badoumiams, who survived the genocide and lived there between the fifties and 1975 before fleeding to America, except for the patriarch of the family who remained until his death in 1983. The house was in ruins when Tom Young and the architect, Rami Feghali, started working on it, but they worked in order to keep the spirit and the legacy of the house.
Tom Young is English born and lives in Beirut where he got married. His involvement in the restoration of the house is emotional : « I have always been attracted to Middle East. I studied in Turkey and visited Egypt, Lebanon and Oman », explains the artist. « The first time I came to Lebanon was in 2006 before the war, then I got back and was shocked by the destructions I saw. I guess having the opportunity to paint and exhibit in this house comforted me somehow ». To honour the memory of the house, he named his exhibition « Carousel », the name of he former owners' gift shop he found invitation cards of, for the opening in 1965. He also reproduced some of the photos he had found. « This family got really happy about it and a lot of the children sent me flowers and cards to thank me, some of them even came to the opening », says Tom Young smiling, « this is what art can do ».
In Villa Paradiso, each room has a different atmosphere, a mix between the original walls and inputs from Tom Young, like his own paintings. Some walls still bear the impact of bullets, and some letters and photos from the Badoumiam family were exposed among the paintings. Landscapes from Amana, Cuba, Southern France and Egypt can be found, among a lot of sketchings of the house (realized in 3 months in the same time than the restoration) and the rest of Beirut, windows' frames, broken glass, "pixellised" portraits of the artist and his wife, and a faucet going down from the roof. « I tried to adapt the present while integrating it to the past of this place, I even put portraits of Roumieh prisoners I met in jail in a small room where you have to squat to go have a look », explains Tom Young.
Walking through the rooms, you cannot prevent yourself from feeling the lost of the Lebanese society during the wars, the uprooting which can lead to a new life : « I wanted to express the longing of a golden age that you feel in Lebanon, symbolizing the absence and the fastness of this new society ». Tom Young managed to paint from photos from the sixties, where you can see people on the beach, happy, in Manara. He totally respected the oldness of the picture by whipping a border, « like if the Lebanese memory was whipped in oder to move on », says the artist.
Florence Massena
The exhibition is now over but below are some pictures :