This thesis draws inspiration from a woman walking over a concrete dome. Alia Farid’s work for the 32nd Sao Paulo Art Biennial was recorded on the Rashid Karami International Fairgrounds, in Tripoli. Those watching the video on the occasion of the Biennial have experienced the feeling of an estranged familiarity, for the dome in Tripoli is in direct tension with an important form of the Brazilian architecture imaginary—one that not by accident also appears instantiated right outside the same Biennial pavilion. Farid’s video explores the semiotic resonance of those two sites through close-ups and carefully positioned shots that make one question whether that scenery is familiar or not. The walking over the dome incites a familiarity to those who already know by heart the curvature of that architecture.
Farid’s video returns to Brazil a form that traveled to Lebanon in 1962 together with the architect Oscar Niemeyer. Between temples, museums, theaters, and political stages, the spaces created by these domes are