For the last two years Darghouth has been preoccupied with parallel concepts which have culminated in three new bodies of work: Beirut Silos, The Explosion and To My Father, From Van Gogh’s Bouquets.
Working with acrylic on paper as well as canvas the artist continues her unabashed social commentary, reflecting upon that which she encounters on the streets of Beirut and beyond and ushering it into expressionistic figuration. Darghouth regularly connects far-flung influences from literature, philosophy and music to her personal experiences. For the Beirut Silos series and The Explosion series, the artist meditates upon the catastrophic explosion that took place in Beirut on 4th August 2020 devastating the community. The Beirut Silos series zones in on the transformation and degradation of the industrial silos that surrounded Beirut’s port during and after the explosion.
The To My Father, From Van Gogh’s Bouquets series, pays tribute to Tagreed’s father who loved flowers immensely and is a loose interpretation of Van Gogh’s paintings of roses, flowers, and bouquets. Shortly before Van Gogh's release from the asylum at Saint–Rémy he began to paint roses as a process of healing and means of coming to terms with both his illness and himself. As he entered into the final stages of recovery, he wrote to his brother Theo, that he had "worked as in a frenzy. Great bunches of flowers, violet irises, big bouquets of roses..."
The three series - Beirut Silos, The Explosion and To My Father, From Van Gogh’s Bouquets - are united by Tagreed’s immense feelings of personal and collective loss; loss of her father and also loss of the Lebanon of the past that her father knew and loved.
Image: Tagreed Darghouth, The Explosion 4 (detail), 2022
