An Interview with Nesrine Khodr

Nesrine Khodr created Sculptured Decompositions (2019–2023), her contribution to the Taipei Biennial 2023, in an unused architectural and urban planning office in Beirut. The works comprise sculptural arrangements of materials that she found in situ as well as an assortment of organic and inorganic materials that she brought into the space. She “choreographed” their decomposition over time, allowing dust to accumulate and the materials to decay at different rates. Maps found in the space serve as the ground for some of the sculptural arrangements. The products of rational planning and technical expertise, the maps are brought into dialogue with the forces of entropy. Khodr spoke with editor William Smith about the role of time in her work, her connection to the space in which it was created, and the cinematic aspects of her art.

William Smith: Sculpture Decompositions developed in a particular space: the office of a defunct architecture firm in Beirut. How did you find the space?

Nesrine Khodr: It used to be my father’s office. He joined an architecture and urban planning firm back in the ’70s as a managing partner. The office was established in the ’60s in one of the buildings that had a defining presence in the Beirut urbanscape at the time. It was really tall back then where it stands facing the Raouche rock, but it was eventually dwarfed by other buildings. Today you can hardly see it from the corniche.

The office’s design activities were significantly reduced in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It picked up again on a smaller scale in the ’90s. My father kept it until he passed away ten years ago. Quite a lot of materials stayed there all along, including lots of maps that the urban planners had prepared.

WS: It sounds like the office became a time capsule while the city around it changed.

NK: The building’s facade and some of the other apartments in the building have been refurbished, not always in a manner that is faithful to the original aesthetics of its architecture. I’ve always been very attached to this office because it’s such a special place: the way it’s designed, the stunning view over the sea and the Raouche rock. My relationship to the space deepened because I realized it represented for me something more than “a personal attachment.” I started spending more and more time there in the last few years; I wanted to hold on to it as much as possible. I started experiencing up close the transformations that were affecting it from the corrosion due to sea salt brought in by the strong winds, and watching the imprint of sea sand coming through the slack window frames on the surfaces next to them, or collecting some of the fallen paint that the winds passing through the glass facade dislodged from the wall. I also got busy examining what it contained, including lots of maps of past projects—of which I donated quite a few to an architecture foundation. There were also some loose maps in the office that didn’t necessarily speak to the history of the firm’s work; I felt like I could use these in an abstract way. You don’t necessarily know their purpose, but you can see that the planners who created them were envisioning a space. 

WS: What is your connection to this office and its work?

NK: My connection is to the whole environment around this place, in the figurative sense as well. I don’t relate to the maps as the work of that office, or of anyone I am intimately connected to. It has transcended that. I have an attachment to the office on the national scale, let’s say, to the building itself, to this idea of being able to see, to look beyond the present time. Envisioning space is about thinking that you can control and manage things—that you can create on a much larger scale.

WS: What does urban planning of that era mean today in Beirut? Is that same process of envisioning a new or better reality possible today?

NK: People working in this field in Lebanon have envisioned quite a bit. In the mid-2000s there was a big technical land-use study, but it was put in a drawer because it needed political action. Urban planners and architects are very active at proposing things, but not much has been done to put into effect what should be implemented. In the ’70s and ’80s they were still “projecting” with a belief that the planning might be concretized, whereas now it feels that this process is on hold. On a personal level, now it’s difficult for me to project. But I keep trying. I’m not giving up on that.

WS: Could you talk about the role of scale in your work? In some ways these sculptures feel like microcosms, but the inclusion of maps points outward to larger spaces as well.

NK: These maps are talking about a vision for land and territory. But around me in the office, the materials were decomposing, becoming particles of what they were. When you take a particle and make an assemblage with it, that’s a kind of movement in scale. Scale also depends on your perspective and context. When you go to the TSMC fabs here in Taiwan, a single piece of dust could represent a huge problem. But in the office, dust has accumulated everywhere. The particles of dust are small compared to everything else. Scale is relative. Foregrounding movement in scale can make you wonder more broadly about how you perceive and process other experiences in your life.

WS: Your work is tied to the histories of Beirut and Lebanon over decades. What is it like for you to transpose that here in Taiwan?

NK: When you go down to the scale of the particle, it’s understandable everywhere is not related specifically to Beirut anymore. It’s coming from there, but I hope it has the potential to step out of that context as well. In the end, the work is paper and dust and maps and stone.

But people from Beirut may have a particular reaction to the piece. Everything is coming from a moment where there has been a kind of violence—not necessarily very strong violence, but violence of different intensities. Glass can be a window, but it can easily become a shard with sharp edges. We surround ourselves with that material and you feel it when you live in places where . . . things happen. You realize immediately the things you surround yourself with are potentially a threat.

WS: Performance is a time-based framework. What kind of time is embodied in your work? It’s not about a forward-looking projection like an urban planning scheme. But neither is it about looking backwards. The passage of time is implied by the changes in these materials.

NK: Forward. Backward. How can we use these terms when we’re talking about materials becoming elemental particles and then becoming something else? Clay comes from mud, and then it becomes a block, and then I take it into my hands and make an object with it. And then it can decay again back into particles if I don’t fire the clay.

The piece embodies time that you can concretely look at, and slowly. Because time is us and we are time, right? These works are transforming slowly in front of you. You see them change over time: they won’t be the same as last week or a few months ago.

WS: You also work in video, and in some ways the temporality you describe reminds me of Extended Sea (2017), a 12-hr video that depicts you swimming back-and-forth in a pool. The frame is static: all we see is a swimmer moving from left to right then back over the course of a day. There’s movement but not progress: you’re not going anywhere even as the sun moves across the sky.

NK: So the comparison is with the idea of not going physically anywhere in a space and yet retaining a sense of movement? But the movement in Sculptured Decompositions is going somewhere, toward smaller and smaller particles. It’s the decomposition of something I’ve composed happening in front of you.

WS: That sounds very cinematic.

NK: Extended Sea brings together the virtual, the material, and the physical in one act. I’m crossing a lot of kilometers, so that’s real. And at the same time, I’m staying in the pool, and what happens outside the frame of the pool also somehow exists as the day progresses. I was thinking a lot about what was happening in other spaces and what other people were experiencing when I was in the pool from dawn to sunset. People crossed continents, or just went about their daily routines.

With the sculptures—these and the ones I have been working on since—there’s still the possibility of experiencing the virtual and the physical together. The piece of dust or a scrap of something I found on the floor are material traces of the space. The maps are talking about a larger configuration that we have to imagine as well. The lines on the map are legible to us—all of these objects are of the space, but they also speak to an imagination and a much larger scale embedded in us.