Le Yacht Club project is an exclusive venue on the new waterfront in Beirut designed by American architect Steven Holl. Dada & Associates conceived the interior architecture and the art collection was compiled and collected by theOtherDada [tOD].

tOD saw an opportunity to intervene differently in the space and initiated a strategy to coordinate and compile a site-specific and curated art collection; a collection encompassing specially commissioned artworks by established and emerging Lebanese contemporary artists and designers.

Adib Dada formed a team with curator Mayssa Fattouh and art advisor Maria Arida to work collaboratively on a collection that opened to discussions pertaining to contextual concerns. The curatorial direction of the project gave free reign to the artists to work, thus insisting that there be no constraints on the issues they wished to tackle. The artists’ works broach a range of topics and unpack critical readings of the city and its developments. Some works also address issues of gender, violence, public space, and social issues specific to the city of Beirut. The selection process began with visits to artist studios, galleries and institutions, looking for works by different local artists, some of whom the team was already familiar with and others it discovered in the process. After months of selection, discussions, and visits the present collection was installed. The long-term vision for this project will seek to widen the scope of the collection over time through this ongoing collaboration in order to communicate and engage the ever-changing nature of the city and its concerns. The artworks were selected for their critical value and to reflect a diversity of media like installation, photography, painting, sculptural and neon works. The collection is divided into three categories: shared spaces (common areas open to members), public spaces (outdoor and spaces accessible to larger public) and private spaces (apartment interiors).

The process started even as the architecture of the interior was conceived; it was of paramount importance to embed the collection in its site-specificity. Regular site visits were conducted during the two and a half years of construction from which developed a complex spatial arrangement of the artworks. The team began by working closely with the architectural specificities of the site, its openings, perspectives and views and curated the body of works in parallel to its architectural conception. This approach strove to highlight its spatial quality by relating it to the activity and the mood of the various spaces, immersing the viewer in an intriguing and daring atmosphere, but also to make the collection powerful enough regardless of the context it’s in.

With this unique and unprecedented curatorial proposal and methodology, theOtherDada aims to set a model for potential private or corporate collections. This ongoing project demonstrates a different conceptualizing of collecting art. Its objective is to emphasize this collection’s critical engagement and site-specificity rather than its decorative qualities through a dialogue with its architectural context.

Curatorial Statement:

Built on rubble, just like centuries old Beirut, the Yacht Club sits on the
remnants of a more recent history, one that is mostly punctuated by turmoil in
all various contexts. Far from being a cemetery, Beirut restlessly picks up on its
leftovers and fragments from its history of ruin and becomes the place where
wild things happen, twisted, braided often formless and ungovernable things.
Its contemporary architecture appears as a surface, attempting to forget and
forgive the layers of its past. A transformed city center flirting with its past
decays and wounds opens up to flocking nostalgic diaspora and tourists hungry
for traces of eventful stories; at its heart the glorified statue by Renato Marino
Mazzacurati erected in memory of the Lebanese nationalists who were hanged
by the Ottomans for revolting during WW 1, perceived by many as a relic of
lost futures after the civil war, which came to replace denigrated monuments by
Youssef Howayek and Salwa Raouda Choucair.
Facing this repository of semi legible history sits the sea, an open and vast space
for the evasiveness of the imagination, offering a dramatic shift in perspective,
one that retains a dubious relationship with the city. The sea allows geopolitical
strength and weaknesses, movement, trade, invasions and natural disasters but
also tales and echoing words. Aware of its unpredictability, the planning of the
city built itself like a shell, turning its back to the shore.

The birth of this multidisciplinary collection in such an atypical place is here to
highlight the relation of Lebanese artists to Beirut and its history. Subjects such
as memory, residues, Mediterranean sea, modernity… subtly appear in the
selected works and translate a desire to act as a clever witness to the waves on
which the city has been riding.

Team: Maria Arida | Adib Dada | Mayssa Fattouh | Tania Ingea