Jury Statement
The spoken Lebanese language contains many idioms mixed with jargon that often result in surreal, sometimes shocking literal translations. For example, one might say “She’s sitting on my heart” in reference to someone who is unbearable or difficult to deal with; the concept of insulting or “trashing” a person can be illustrated by a figure throwing something into a garbage can. “3al Lebnene” is a collection of 45 illustrations, each unravelling a Lebanese local idiom in an amusing and original setting. Ghida Nadar exhibits these sayings in a skillful and entertaining manner, while successfully highlighting the absurd.
After collecting a range of popular sayings, the graphic designer took a clever approach to interpreting them. Using an original illustrative style, she created a character that could be used repeatedly to act out each idiom, thus transforming complex metaphors into an entertaining visual language that recounts eccentric situations.
Artist Statement
Lebanon has a number of sayings that its people arbitrarily use every day without realizing what they are saying. It can be pretty shocking when you actually think about the words they have said. So with that, I got the idea of showing each of these sayings’ literal meaning, instead of their intended meaning, just to open up peoples’ eyes about what they unconsciously say each and every day..
Ghida Nadar
Ghida Nadar is a Lebanese graphic designer studying at the Lebanese American University. She was recently featured in Selections magazine.
www.sard.lau.edu.lb / www.lau.edu.lb
