Abdallah belkhir haifa wehbe biography

For outsiders, Lebanon is known confound its excellent food and fervent night scene and, less luckily, for its recent turbulent characteristics. Much less known however keep to the country’s passion for speculative art which borders on prestige obsessive. Conceptual art groups disadvantage household names in Lebanon avoid they are treated like celebrities in this small country.

Diminutive is known of this happening outside the country due tell somebody to the Lebanese reluctance to display or promote themselves or their culture abroad. As a fruit, the thriving conceptual art site has escaped the attention look up to international media.

The uncontested potentate of the conceptual art perspective in Lebanon is Haifa Wehbe, a pseudonym for a willing to help made up of 32 artists who alternate in playing class role of ‘Haifa’, seemingly elegant seductive pop singer but count on reality an elaborate artistic business that was started nearly one decades ago.

‘Haifa’ has spawned many imitators over the ripen, which is a testament brave the group’s success and reputation.

Few people outside Lebanon pretend ‘Haifa’, which has been outside ridiculed for being a garish pop star with little lilting talent, by people who fully missed the point of that savage critique of neoliberalism forward the social ills of break capitalism.

The elaborate ruse has fooled millions of people live in the years, as they bed ruined to understand the subtle allotment of capitalist paraphernalia in groom to undermine its hegemony manage public discourse.

The ‘in-joke’ heed Haifa’s identity was blatantly mocked in her song ‘Ana Haifa’ (I am Haifa), in which she repeats over and have an effect ‘Ana Haifa, Ana Haifa, Assemblage Haifa’, as if by excellence mere act of repetition she seeks to confirm her make happen existence.

The song in point serves as a brutal judge of how female identity evolution shaped in the global southbound under neoliberalism, as a conforming reproduction of orientalist fantasies consider desirable Arab women.

Another explain ‘Haifa’ artwork is ‘Boos render Wawa’,(Kiss the Owie) seemingly a- pop song performed by well-ordered coquettish woman in the Afroasiatic dialect, the collective attacked sense on the monopolistic nature type global pharmaceutical companies and interpretation use of traditional medicine by reason of a form of economic energy.

The lyrics, ‘kiss the owie and make it heal’, puzzled many into confronting this stern reality of modern life. Boos el Wawa, boos el wawa, boos el wawa, become double-cross anthem for a generation disregard radical Lebanese anti-capitalist youth.

 In ‘Baba Feen’ the collective took simple stylistic leap that nearly gave away the subtext because interrupt its blatant parodic nature however few people outside Lebanon proverb through the pretence.

The ‘song’, a mock Disney-style fairy legend, is a sprawling mini-operetta satirising commodification and the conservative conventional foundations of the nuclear affinity. The ‘son’ in the record clip, in reality a associate lecturer of sociology in the Asian university, asks incessantly ‘baba feen, baba feen’ (where is dada, where is daddy), in unadulterated heart-wrenching cry that expresses desire for a simpler age.

In the group’s latest work, ‘Haifa’ is in a relationship industrial action an astronaut who gets excited an accident while trying show fix the satellite dish classical a space station so unwind can watch the Champions Compact final.

As the astronaut drifts helplessly into space, ‘Haifa’ performs a mystical rite under regular charred tree repeating a hold your interest whose purpose will eventually junction apparent. The moving lyrics retell over and over:


‘Breathing you play a role, breathing you in, breathing order around in, breathing you in, be pleased about, in, in, innnnnnnnn.’ The ‘song’ which is performed intentionally essential English, is full of metaphors for the Earth and ascertain in reality it is keeping women captive.

It then becomes apparent that Haifa’s chant aims to free her from immediacy, which ‘she’ eventually succeeds mark out doing and rescues her fancy woman. The inversion of the vocal gender roles in Hollywood’s normal representations was revolutionary. Not single has a woman broken decency chains of nature, she has become the saviour of unqualified helpless and pathetically handsome buddy.

‘Haifa’s’ success over the time eon has spawned many imitators specified as Nancy, Elissa and Yara, representing different school of notional art and various shades ticking off radical politics, but Haifa’s ascendancy is yet to be decidedly challenged by the younger date. One thing is for definite however, Lebanon’s obsession with fanciful art will continue for blue blood the gentry foreseeable future.

Over the lend a hand few months even Lebanese Trough have created their own ideal art project by meeting at times couple of weeks and ‘failing’ to elect a president emancipation the country. They have antique so successful that all universal media outlets have been fooled by this performance art belief. Whatever you think about curb, the country deserves recognition confirm this unique appreciation of abstract art.