b. 1978 in Lebanon

Ziad Antar lives and works between Saida (Lebanon) and Paris (France). He graduated with a degree in agricultural engineering in 2001, and has been working in photography and video since 2002. Antar is concerned with the visual language of video and his reflections are translated in simple, short videos often taken in a single shot. For example, in Marche Turque (2007), the frame focuses on the hands of a pianist playing Mozart’s La Marche Turque, but the piano’s hammers are buffered so that only the dull, wooden sound of the keys being pressed and released in time to the music can be heard. While there is always a performer —the hands that make the dish in Mdaradara, the man in Tambourro (2004) who improvises a rhythm by slapping his wet chest in the shower, or the two children who sing along to a keyboard drum beat in Wa (2004)— the protagonists are not themselves the subject of Antar’s work and neither are they playing  roles in a document or narrative. Rather they perform an act that creates a self-conscious response in the viewer, by offsetting obvious expectations and encouraging a tentative humour, to ultimately convey a translation in video of Antar’s initial idea. In 2006 Antar presented work in exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; in La Cabane at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris and in the Oberhausen Film Festival in Germany. In addition to his short video works, Antar directed his first documentary in 2002 on the French photographer Jean-Luc Moulène, titled Jean-Luc Moulène and has since made several documentaries for the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya, including, 'L’Islam et la laïcité' (2004), 'Lebanon and its Partners' (2005), 'The Role of Europe' (2007).