Layla Dagher (b. Beirut) is a contemporary, Lebanese visual artist. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree as well as a Masters of Visual Arts degree from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA), the latter of which she earned with honours.
In her earlier pieces, she is known for her square compositions resembling window frames, in which figures and animals often appear, with an abstracted landscape or cityscape in the background. Her color palette is always rich and well-studied. In her more recent artworks, she combines the technique of collage and layering with painting, still exploring the city and the landscape as a core subject matter. Her devotion to Beirut and the landscape of Lebanon is evident in the continuous exploration of the subject matter, typically in variations-on-a-theme. Her technique and choice of media is in continuous evolution.
Dagher has participated in numerous solo and group shows in Beirut. She also has exhibited internationally, participating in shows in Tokyo, Seoul and Paris. Her work is featured in esteemed private and public collections including the Lebanese Ministry of Culture. She is a Professor of Fine Arts at the Notre Dame University (NDU), and a member of the Syndicate of Lebanese Artists. She lives and works in Beirut.
Against the fatal quietude
New, astounding, powerful, and confident is Layla Dagher’s latest [work]. It advances with assured steps, not horizontally but structurally, in the fabric of the painting and its chromatic and architectural composition.
This is the result of a painting that reflects on the process through which it finds its futurity, leaning on the legacy of its distinctive experiences in handling natural landscapes on one hand, and urban spaces on the other. These two legacies are fully integrated in the exhibition, twin-like, interwoven. In fact, they form the foundation for a coherent and expressive compositional world, with a solidarity and unity that is unmistakable.
It is indeed a world in which the painting does not disavow its past, but rather ‘reinvents’ it as never before. And here we are; facing a painting that enables this familiar, calm, narrative past to find its way into a forthcoming life. One that engages with the complexities of the current era, probes the questions of art, tests them, confronts them, argues with them, and harmonizes with them.
And in doing all this, it moves beyond confession, preserving instead symbols and meanings, focusing its compositional and investigative energy on how to harmonize details, elements, tools, additions, collages, and colors so they materialize into a single orchestral structure—scenic and urban—that unlocks the horizon for the painting, making it a fruit of today’s diverse artistic rebirths.
Whilst reading the varied lives within the painting, the ‘cunning’ calmness perceived by the eye undoubtedly reflects the artist’s refusal to settle for what is ready-made, familiar, conventional, or reassuring in landscape or urban-scene paintings.
That same ‘cunning’ calmness also reflects the patient and precise effort surrounding the act of composing, and the experimental culture that unceasingly seeks out what empowers it to confront the hardships of contemporary life, to absorb and express them, an indication of the unique quality of Layla Dagher’s work.
The exhibition is in search of a painting that escapes the realm of fatal quietude, and it succeeds in finding its pursuit.
Therein lies its secret.
- Akl Awit