Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Profile: From drone strikes to wind turbines, the artist's latest works examine the weaponization of noise and the politics of listening

- by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie

On a Thursday evening in early spring, a crowd packed into the Sfeir-Semler Gallery in Beirut. Located on the fourth floor of an industrial building, the long, narrow space has huge windows along one side that afford views of the city and its surrounding hills. While not exactly lovely, the vista can be breathtaking, when every surface on every structure suddenly reflects the shocking pinks, reds and oranges of the sunset, which occurs, unseen, on the other side of the building.

For his second solo show at the gallery, Lawrence Abu Hamdan has installed a new work, Planned Obsolescence (2025), in the space beside the windows. After scouring Beirut’s vintage shops and Souk al-Ahad (Sunday market) for ten old television sets that miraculously still work, he has placed them on rickety stands. Each plays the final footage recorded by a camera belonging to a journalist or news agency, such as that used for a Reuters live stream, which was intentionally shot at by Israeli forces in Gaza. To darken the room, the windows are covered with deep red filters. At the time of the opening, the combination of these filters and reflected sunlight made everything in the gallery glow pink.