NOUR SHANTOUT
MON *BERLIN EDITION 2019
Transience, social injustice and the aestheticized representation of the everyday are just some of the questions posed in the artworks of Nour Shantout (born 1991, Damascus, Syria).
Shantout began her studies at the Academy of Arts in Damascus in 2009 and soon after moved to Beirut continuing her studies there. In 2014 she graduated from the Academy of Arts in Lebanon where she was honored with the Helen El Khal Award.
Shantouts works deal primarily with the alternation of home and social structures, with a focus on how physical work is becoming obsolete in an increasingly digitized world. Shantout is giving her concepts a shape by exploring the properties of a variety of materials such as plaster, fabrics, leather, wood, found objects or epoxy resin.
ONCE UPON A TIME: UNTITLED
UN INSTANT
Nour Shantouts works address the notion of a futuristic museum in which contemporary artifacts (work jackets, protective clothing and other attire) are preserved, conserved and exhibited with alongside replicas of exhibition signage from the Vienna Treasury.
The central question that arises from the prospective context of such a futuristic museum, is whether physical work and the basis of the neoliberal exploitation of the socially disadvantaged would be romanticized and trans gured in a museum context.
In her film Un Instant, 2015, Shantout explores her own temporary stay in Paris alongside the transience of beauty in public spaces.
ONCE UPON A TIME: UNTITLED
Nour Shantout
2017
G4 wood primer, textile hardener, painters jacket
Museum of Now *Berlin Edition
Photo by urbanpresents
UN INSTANT
Nour Shantout
2015
Museum of Now *Berlin Edition
Photo by Ben Gross
