Artist and Artwork: Tagreed Darghouth
Born in 1979 in Saida, Lebanon, Tagreed Darghouth currently lives in Beirut. She operates as a socio-cultural historian, with a practice that focuses on the myriad cultural changes in her country. Darghout received her degree in Fine Arts from Lebanese University in Beirut, and continued her studies at the Ayloul Summer Academy at Darat Al Funoun in Amman with Marwan Kassab Bachi and at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris.
Darghuth’s artwork deals with intriguing subjects ranging from war, and obsession of Lebanese young people with cosmetic surgery and the impacts of imported foreign female domestic workers on Lebanese mother-child relationships. In one of her portrait series, ‘Miror Mirror’ Darghuth expresses her perspective on widespread obsession with cosmetic surgery amongst Lebanese youth. The portrait series features a number of plastic surgery patients at various stages of healing after reducing the arch of their noses. The artist highlights the trauma involved in physically slicing away past cultural connections in favor of new ones which are perceived as favorable. Darghuth illustrates the swollen and disfigured features of patients which appear injured and abused during the process of healing, although everything they go through is voluntarily.
In 2004, Darghouth had her first solo exhibition, Still Features, at Zico House in Beirut, which was then followed by Falling Parts at the Goethe institute in Beirut in 2006. She has since had several solo exhibitions at Agial Art Gallery, including Mirror, Mirror! In 2008, Fair & Lovely in 2010, Canticle of Death in 2011, Rehearsals in 2013, and Vision Machines, Shall You See Me Better Now? in 2015. More recently, in 2019 Tabari Artspace, Dubai held Darghouth’s solo exhibition, Strange Fruit. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the world. Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions in Al-Sharjah, Amman, Beirut, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Doha, Dubai, Jordan, Istanbul, London, Miami, Berlin, New York, Paris, and Singapore, among many other locations, including the 10th Anniversary of the Kasa Art Gallery exhibition in Istanbul in 2010, Connecting Heavens at Green Art Gallery in Dubai in 2010, Subtitled: With Narratives from Lebanon at the Royal College of Art in London in 2011, and Thin Skin: Six Artists from Beirut at Taymour Grahne Gallery in New York in 2014.
Darghouth was awarded first prize by the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris at the cm3 competition in 2003.
