Najla El Zein: Transition

NAJLA EL ZEIN TRANSITION

FRIEDMAN BENDA 515 WEST 26TH STREET NEW YORK NY 10001

Installation view: Transition, Friedman Benda, NY

Installation view: Transition, Friedman Benda, NY

Transition

Her approach is not based in exterior observation of the body—as in a life drawing session—or a

Glenn Adamson

superficial conception of the erotic, as one might encounter in mass culture. Rather, it is a projection of her own internal experience, in all its depth. For this reason, to understand El Zein’s work it helps

Najla El Zein has said that her designs “have been a way for me to dissect and analyze every emotion,

to understand something about her. Born in Beirut in 1983, her family fled conflict there and she grew

every thought, every impression, putting a form to it, test it, touch it, get closer to it. Physically making it

up in France, studying in Paris (at the École Camondo), and then working for a time in the Netherlands.

to be experienced the way I had experienced it.” Leaning in close to her objects, you can feel the depth

“Quite accidentally,” she moved to Beirut in 2011, a place where she had family roots but few of her

of that commitment. It is as present as a breath on your face. And yet, despite this sensuous conception,

own. She has lived and worked there since, in a city that she describes as chaotic, unstable, intense,

her works express metaphysical states, the abstract conceptions of human desire, passion, and loss.

but also liberating. “Moving here made me discover myself, I learned to let go,” she says. “A part of me

They are animated by a simple but provocative idea: that the most expansive horizons for design lie

changed. I feel more complete.”

within the self.

Three years ago El Zein became pregnant. That is a life-altering experience for anyone; in her case, The design discipline has broadened dramatically in recent years, in its geographic, political,

it was also strangely alienating. “I became estranged from my own body,” she recalls, “you lose

technological, and conceptual dimensions. There’s more space, more freedom, than ever before. Many

knowledge of who you are.” Already someone with a powerful affinity for objects, she now felt herself

new talents have arrived on the scene, to explore the wide-open possibilities. But none has achieved

to be one: “the body becomes a vehicle that drives you from one point to the other. You lose control of

quite what El Zein has. She is that very rare person in any discipline: a natural-born storyteller, albeit

it, it functions independently, working for another purpose.” At the same time, her romantic relationship

one who speaks in the terms of abstraction. She shares what she has to say honestly, without artifice.

inevitably evolved —a journey that she remembers as complex but meaningful: “I needed to understand

Intuition and intention fold together, with no space between.

motherhood and of course juggle with also understanding who I am as a person, a woman, a lover, from body, to mind, to touch, to feelings, to emotions, to fear, to love, and all of it altogether and all at

A narrow reading of her work would dwell on its relationship to the body. Look at these seats and

the same time.” Much of this experience she holds close, still. But gradually, she emerged from this

benches, her lamps, her contrapposto columns, and you may fancy that you see the lineaments of

period of change, her designs helping her to do so and expressing what she had gone through, in a

bodies. These touches are never explicit or overstated, but nonetheless there, just under the objects’

way that felt true.

taut surfaces. There is an intimacy to the shapes. They suggest the clefts where parts meet, the most sensitive and vulnerable parts of us. So, at first blush, El Zein seems simply to be speaking the language

Her Distortion series was the first realization of this instinct. Like all her work, it communicates

of figurative sculpture —a specific vocabulary, initially developed by figures like Barbara Hepworth and

intense expression through miraculously minimal means. The title refers to El Zein’s own corporeal

Isamu Noguchi—in an unconventional context. One could even say, reductively, that she is claiming the

transformation during pregnancy, and also (perhaps more self-evidently) to the benches’ surrealistic

psychological and sensual charge of sculpture for her functional objects. But this is not so much a case

rounded swells. These are variously positioned, demarcating the pieces into unusual situations for

of influence, or historical borrowing; rather, El Zein has found herself traveling down a similar path as

seating: here there is just enough space for a couple to settle in close, there, a perch for an isolated

other artists, for similar reasons.

sitter. Meanwhile, the smooth curvature of the form beckons the hand. The unusual material—concrete

reinforced with resin—is sanded to a fine, almost silky texture. Even if you know nothing of El Zein and

One could perhaps read El Zein’s incorporation of her private life as a feminist gesture—if one believes

her life, sitting on a Distortion bench is an intimate experience, honed yet supple, at once hard and soft.

that the “personal is political,” as the saying goes—and recently, she was a prominent inclusion in a groundbreaking show of contemporary women designers at the Dallas Museum of Art. Yet for her, the

This same combination of formal simplicity and psychological complexity is found throughout all of

works are not about female subjectivity per se. Rather, she aims to evoke the subjective dynamics of all

El Zein’s new body of work—a phrase that takes on new meaning here. The forms teeter right at the

relationships, and the deeper truth of her own memories: “it’s not related to gender as such, it’s just the

fulcrum between abstraction and representation. There are clear allusions not just to pregnant bellies,

way it was.” From another perspective, we can see this as a strategy with wider potential application.

expectant bodies, but also intertwined limbs, exposed hips and backsides, legs clasped tight together.

She has found a way to use emotion as her form-generator. In theory, any interaction between two

The Seduction series is El Zein’s most autobiographical. It tells a sequential story in which an initial

people could be used to create a comparable set of shapes, which would feel equally abstract and

emotional distance is overcome, arriving step by explorative step into blissful union. In conversation,

equally true.

she narrates this story in fragments, shifting in and out of first-person. Here, for example, is her description of the first piece in the series, which has two independent forms:

Fragmented Pillars, the last group of objects in this exhibition, relate to a private sense of fragility. She thinks of them as symbols of an inner disturbance, of tottering on one’s foundations. To be sure, they

I had to understand how to reconnect again with my own body. And that has different stages. Two

also insistently recall ruined cities, both ancient and modern, and Lebanon’s volatile recent history, to

people —one bending too close, the other can’t be touched. One (him) is rocking, and that expresses

say nothing of the horrific war currently unfolding in bordering Syria, seems a ghostly presence. Yet

flirtation, dialogue. Moving and approaching. And I’m not ready, I’m completely closed, folded onto

the Pillars are El Zein’s most anthropomorphic designs to date. Each has a distinctive stance and—

myself.

one is inclined to say—its own personality. This is achieved simply through variation in the angles of the stacked plaster components. Somehow, these slight shifts of geometry convey an impression of

Again, material helps to tell the story. You can just tell, looking at the finished objects, that at no point

persistence in the face of instability. As she puts it, “they are not to do with the ruins that surround me,

in their genesis were they flat drawings. El Zein worked clay in her hands, smoothing and folding it

but the ruins of the soul.” Each jutting shape in the column is like a fragment of that soul, partly opened

until it was just so, then setting it on a flat surface, leaving it and coming back, picking it up, pulling at

up to view. Rather than seeing them as a specific response to the situation of the Middle East, then, it

its skin and pushing at its weight. The plasticity of these sketches can be felt in the scaled-up works,

makes most sense to read them—just as we should read all of El Zein’s creations—as a synthesis of

but they are carved in stone, asserting a degree of monumentality and neutrality. “I wanted to put the

personal subjectivity and universal experience.

shape forward rather than the material,” she says. “I wanted the material be used as a tool to express the story, not become the story itself.” Yet the stones she specified do have a subtle resonance. Thus

It was difficult work, gathering the energies for this show, and realizing them in physical form. Along the

far El Zein has completed three of the ten models she originally conceived for the Seduction series

way, as in any journey, there were discoveries. When El Zein first started working on the Fragmented

at full furniture scale, just enough to indicate the outlines of the narrative. To more fully indicate the

Pillars, for example, she did not think of them as explicitly figural; that language emerged gradually.

arc of her thinking, she has also designed a related series of sculptures, which proceed in a material

The imagery of the Seduction series similarly took on emotional weight for her, as it was gradually

progression from cool pale Italian travertine, warming to Iranian silver travertine, and finally to Spanish

embodied over the course of the making process. It seems appropriate that her materials are mined

niwala (a type of sandstone), as the “plotline” moves toward its resolution.

from the dark earth and brought into the light, for her design process involves a similar process of quarrying—an excavation and exteriorization of something hidden.

This exhibition is, then, somewhat paradoxical: an act of self-revelation that nonetheless retains an air of circumspection. It had to be like this, both passionate and private. For El Zein is addressing matters that are hard to think through, hard to articulate. This investigation is rooted in her own experience, but the poignant results are there for us all to feel, and connect to. And that is the real wonder of this body of work (a phrase that seems more appropriate to El Zein than any other current designer). For all that it is self-protective, even mysterious, its greatest virtue can be summed up in one word: generosity.

WORKS

DISTORTION

Distortion, 03, 2018 Fiber reinforced resin concrete 18 x 102 x 19.75 inches 45.7 x 260 x 50 cm Edition of 5

Distortion, 06, 2017 Fiber reinforced resin concrete 27.25 x 78.75 x 19.5 inches 69.2 x 200 x 49.5 cm Edition of 5

Distortion, 07, 2018 Fiber reinforced resin concrete 15 x 90.5 x 19.75 inches 38 x 230 x 50 cm Edition of 5

Distortion, 10, 2018 Fiber reinforced resin concrete 20.25 x 74.5 x 19.75 inches 51.6 x 189 x 50 cm Edition of 5

Distortion, 12, 2017 Fiber reinforced resin concrete 21.5 x 38.5 x 19.75 inches 54.6 x 97.8 x 50.2 cm Edition of 5 Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

SEDUCTION

Seduction, f, 2018 Italian travertine 17.5 x 12.5 x 11.5 inches 44.5 x 32 x 29.5 cm Edition of 5

Seduction, m, 2018 Italian travertine 21 x 35 x 14.25 inches 53 x 89 x 36 cm Edition of 5

left: Seduction, m right: Seduction, f

Seduction, Pair 01, 2018 Niwala sandstone 29 x 67 x 74.5 inches 74 x 170 x 189 cm Edition of 5

Seduction, Pair 02, 2018 Niwala sandstone 14 x 16 x 9 inches 35.2 x 40.5 x 22.5 cm Edition of 5

Seduction, Pair 03, 2019 Iranian silver travertine 7.5 x 16.5 x 5.75 inches 19 x 42 x 14.5 cm Edition of 5 Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

Seduction, Pair 06, 2019 Iranian red travertine 27.5 x 62.5 x 18.75 inches 70 x 159 x 47.5 cm Edition of 8

Seduction, Pair 04, 2018 Niwala sandstone 13.5 x 12.5 x 8.25 inches 34 x 32 x 21 cm Edition of 5

Seduction, Pair 05, 2018 Niwala sandstone 13 x 12.5 x 8.25 inches 32.8 x 31.5 x 2 cm Edition of 5

F R AG M E N T E D P I L L A R S

Fragmented Pillar, 01, 2018 Plaster sand 49.25 x 14 x 12 inches 125 x 36 x 30 cm Edition of 5

Fragmented Pillar, 08, 2018 Plaster sand 86.75 x 22 x 22 inches 220 x 56 x 56 cm Edition of 5

Fragmented Pillar, 10, 2018 Plaster sand 85 x 17 x 17 inches 216 x 43 x 43 cm Edition of 5

F R AG M E N T S

Fragment, 01, 2018 Plaster sand 14 x 13.25 x 12.25 inches 35.5 x 34 x 31 cm Edition of 8

Fragment, 02, 2018 Plaster sand 21.75 x 12 x 12 inches 55.5 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm Edition of 8

Fragment, 03, 2018 Plaster sand 20 x 21.25 x 21.25 inches 50.5 x 54 x 54 cm Edition of 8

Fragment, 04, 2018 Plaster sand 12.5 x 21.25 x 16.5 inches 31.5 x 54 x 42 cm Edition of 8

Fragment, 05, 2018 Plaster sand 17.5 x 11.75 x 10.75 inches 44.5 x 30 x 27 cm Edition of 8

Fragment, 06, 2018 Plaster sand 11.25 x 16 x 15.25 inches 28.5 x 40.5 x 39 cm Edition of 8

Fragment, 07, 2018 Plaster sand 17.75 x 11.75 x 10.5 inches 45 x 30 x 27 cm Edition of 8

Fragment, 08, 2018 Plaster sand 11.25 x 20.25 x 20.25 inches 28.5 x 51.5 x 51.5 cm Edition of 8

Present

Lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon

2008-2010

Lived and worked in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

2007

Graduated from École Camondo, Paris, France with a BA in Product Design and a MA in Interior Architecture and Spatial Design

2001

Attended Atelier de Sèvres, Paris, France

1985

Moved to Paris, France

1983

Born in Beirut, Lebanon

Select Solo Exhibitions 2019

Najla El Zein: Transition, Friedman Benda, New York, NY

2018-2019

Women + Design: New Works, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Jungle Protocol, House of Today, Beirut, Lebanon

2015

Maison et Objet, Precious, Elizabeth Leriche, Paris, France Heartland - Territoire d’affects, Beirut Exhibition Center, Beirut, Lebanon

2014

Naked, House of Today, Naked, Beirut, Lebanon Around the Table, SMO gallery, Beirut, Lebanon

2013

2012

The Wind Portal, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom

Art is the Answer, Boghossian Foundation, Brussels, Belgium

Public Collections

NAJLA EL ZEIN

Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England

Installation view: Transition, Friedman Benda, NY

Installation view: Transition, Friedman Benda, NY

Installation view: Transition, Friedman Benda, NY

NAJLA EL ZEIN TRANSITION

Design: Olivia Swider Photography by: Damien Arlettaz

Seduction, 01 image and artist’s portrait by: Karen & Josette Installation images: by Dan Kukla

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Content copyright of Friedman Benda and the artist.