The Heart of the Revolution: the Artistic Activism of Hayat Nazer
Hayat and the Lady at the Port.
The world of art is full of facets, sometimes difficult to delineate. Hippolyte Taine in "The Philosophy of Art" (1865) stated that art, as a human being expression, depends on three factors: heredity, social environment and historical moment. In turn, Emile Zola replied to the French philosopher arguing that a political-historical contextualization of art would be reductive. In fact, art also takes into account artists’ experiences, emotions and feelings. The fluid, dynamic, changing nature of art prevents it from being truly defined, oscillating between expression, creativity and politicization. The same definition problem arises when one talks about art and activism. Art, historically speaking, has always been a political matter, in terms of commitment, topics, commissions and as an affirmation of a status quo. Art, or rather artists, have always pursued political and social commitment, especially since the twentieth century in conjunction with political ideologies, workers and students social protests, and the rise of feminist and LGBTQ+ movements, coming to speak of artistic activism. Yet, not all art can be defined as a form of activism. Likewise, forms of political activism cannot always be considered artistic. In the contemporary panorama, in a world where social urgencies are becoming more and more pressing, activist art is heterogeneous. It goes beyond aesthetic contemplation, giving way to a more direct type of involvement, both practical and emotional.
Hayat Nazer's art fits precisely in this context.
"My art is made with people, for the people and to the people."
Hayat Nazer is a Lebanese Artist-Activist. After leaving her job at the United Nations to devote herself entirely to art, her true passion, she took part in the revolution in Lebanon, becoming one of its icons. Free from market conditioning, Hayat creates her art to raise general awareness, addressing everyone from all social and economic classes.
“I learned the real power of art in the streets, on the ground, building my sculptures together with other protesters. My creation has involved hundreds of people, giving not only social awareness but also security, strength and the desire to act and change. A disabled, Syrian refugee street-food seller with no forearms saw me building the “heart of the revolution” sculpture. He asked if he could help. I smiled and gave him the materials. People were watching the process and started encouraging and cheering for him. He told me that he had been passing by the same street for years, and no one had ever noticed him. Participating in building the sculpture changed his life: for the first time, he felt he was not handicapped, he felt like a complete person. This is the power of art. "
Hayat making The Heart of the Revolution.
The Heart of the Revolution is an installation built in Martyrs’ Square symbolizing peace, reconciliation, and union. It is also a message of solidarity between protestors and the police. In fact, half of the heart was made up of tear gas canisters thrown by the police and the other half was made up of stones thrown by the protestors. These weapons are wrapped in heart-shaped barbed wire representing the wounds on both sides’ hearts, the tortured and conflicted love for their country. Sometimes love arises from pain, from suffering, leaving scars that must be visible to perpetuate the memory. Without forgetting the past and what one has suffered, one must always know how to get up, keep fighting, come back from ashes. It is not surprising then that Hayat decided to build the statue of a phoenix, made with the remains of the protesters’ tents in Martyrs’ Square. According to Greek mythology, the phoenix is a long-lived bird that cyclically regenerates arising from the ashes of its predecessor. Like the firebird, Lebanon must also be able to be reborn after the economic collapse, the political turmoil, the pandemic and the explosion that took place in August, 2020. Hayat speaks a symbolic, mythological, spiritual language, teaching us that sometimes words are not needed to reach people's hearts.
“When I decided to build the Phoenix, a real miracle happened. When I saw the pro-government protestors breaking our tents, it broke my heart. They wanted to break us to end the revolution. I wanted to fight back, to tell our politicians that we will rise again, and I wanted to tell my people that we are strong. I had never created a sculpture before, and I did not know how I was going to make it. However, I was somehow sure that I could have done it. I went to the square and started collecting the broken metals of the tents. Protestors started asking me what I was doing, and I explained to them that the phoenix must have risen because they could not break us. We were the phoenix. Suddenly, around 100 people started helping me build the firebird. We attached the metals one next to the other by sewing them with a plastic rope. The phoenix rose on the day of independence, and it was completed after ten days. None of the volunteers were artists or had previous experiences with sculptures. We had gathered together to build this artwork, hand in hand, from different religions, social classes and areas. It was our love for our country, our will to live and to rise, that joined us. It was healing and powerful. Art joined us, and through it, we managed to erect what has become the Martyrs' Square’s symbol. The martyr's statue represents the civil war, when we killed one another, because of religion and sectarianism, the Phoenix was a symbol of life, built with love and unity.”
Hayat and the Phoenix.
Hayat's art is not only social in its message, but also in its material and essence. She builds her sculptures using the debris of the rubble of those same sufferings that have struck Beirut. Objects, rocks, glass, drapes, everything. Hayat takes the tears of a torn country and turns them into art. It is a clear message of hope, of strength. With the same technique, Hayat built the unnamed Lady at the Port. The sculpture was born following the explosion that hit Beirut in August 2020. Painted on the left cheek of the sculpture is a scar, and the movement of her hair, flowing behind her, gives the impression that the explosion is still happening. Her right side, on the other hand, is firm, solid, with a bristling hand holding, like Prometheus, a torch, a symbol of liberty, rebellion, enlightenment. This duality represents the city of Beirut: shaken, scarred, destroyed, but ready again to rise and fight. At the base of the statue, on the left side, there is a clock wrapped in a red cloth representing victims’ blood. The hour is that of the explosion. As in Hiroshima, also in Beirut, there is now a clock that indicates the exact moment when time stopped, remaining an indelible memory. Likewise, art overcomes time and remains eternal. Art itself is memory, remembrance, history.
"People try to forget the pain in order to survive. Often we prefer to deny what has hit us to move forward. However, I'm afraid that's not right because it would risk making the same mistakes all over again. We are stuck in the same pattern because we did not heal yet from all the traumas of the past. The pain we still carry from our ancestors it’s in our DNA. I live in a country where there are no civil war memorials, where museums are just for the elite, where censorship tries to destroy what I create. The unnamed Lady at the Port should remain there. She is motionless to remind everyone of that afternoon, of that roar, of that tragedy whose culprits have not yet been found."
Lady at the Port.
In a Beirut that continually rises from its own ashes, being rebuilt and remodelled, in which only abandoned buildings (such as the Burj al Murr, the Saint George Hotel, the Holiday Inn or the cinema l'Oeuf) remain as indelible signs of the atrocities of the past, Hayat's dream is to build a huge, long-lasting replica of the lady as a memorial of that explosion, collecting the pieces and the affections of all those affected. She wants it not just to be a symbolic monument, but a healing, educative message to the people.
The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in his work What is the Creative Act? (1987) said that “a work of art must give rise to problems and issues in which we are caught, rather than providing answers.” Hayat's works do exactly this: they speak to people perpetuating the memory of what happened during these last years. Her art is not provocative; it does not want to create discomfort or disturbance, but intends to strike at the heart, creating awareness. Her art is free from market constraints, and logics of reputation and value. Hayat does not make her art for money, but for her people, as she believes in change, cohesion, and brotherhood. Hayat is an activist, an artist, a person full of sincere passion and love for her country. Her art is active, alive, creative, dynamic, perpetual. Despite the fact that not all of her works have remained standing, including the Phoenix which was swept away by government censorship, Hayat's name will stay in memory and history, indeed in the minds and hearts of those who have seen her works and helped her. Change is a slow process, but not a utopia. Graffiti, sculptures, drawing, within their simplicity, can touch souls and minds, giving back to women and men the taste for inventing, creating and fighting. This is the purpose of both art and activism, and Hayat's activist art is an example of it.
Imagery courtesy of Hayat Nazer.
For more information on Hayat, check out her Instagram profile.
Federico Raffa
Features Editor, MADE IN BED