Christine Kettaneh
Currency of Decay
February 5 – March 5, 2025
“What happens when the essentials of life—our bread, our currency, our homes—begin to erode under the weight of crisis? The works in this exhibition are born from a context of economic collapse, corruption, conflict, and war, where the staples of existence become casualties of systemic decay.
Bread and home, like money, hold symbolic and practical value. So when they decay—through devaluation, inflation, infestation, displacement, or destruction—their currency diminishes in the sense that they can no longer serve their purpose: bread as sustenance, money as value, home as security.
This exhibition is not merely about loss, or decay. It is about value, or currency: how we assign it, protect it, and lose it. Through devaluation, both economic and existential, it challenges us to reexamine our dependence on symbols of stability, revealing the profound connections that persist even when our foundations crumble.”
About the artist
Christine Kettaneh is a Lebanese artist based in Beirut. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (2013) and a MSc in Finance and Economics from The London School of Economics (2005). An economist by training, Kettaneh is fluent in the highly metaphoric language of liquidity and viscosity inherent to the world's most flexible 'good': capital. Later trained at an art school characterized by material asceticism, she experiments with a system of codes in which these infinite operations and equations turn into sculptural shapes, at the same time that they disintegrate into pure chaos.
Kettaneh’s interdisciplinary approach to exploring the world invited collaborations with different sectors. She was recently guest artist in “Global Climate Lab 2” (2023), which is an immersive research lab, and a space for collaboration between climate researchers and artists, addressing the emotions that are usually sidelined by scientific, Western-disciplinary methods. She had previously collaborated with scientists who are building the world’s biggest neutron source at the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Malmö, Sweden, in the artist residency “Nanocosmic Investigations – Artists in Conversation with ESS” (2021-2022); She contributed to two editions of the conference “Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century” alongside computer scientists and linguists (2020 and 2022); She was one of the ‘futurists’ that were recruited by Oliver Wyman and Neom for an ideation workshop to explore ways the future citizens of Neom could engage with the natural landscape of The Line (2022).
Christine Kettaneh has participated in different artist residencies like “La Sughereta,” organized by Cassata Drone in collaboration with Andrea Masu (Alterazioni Video, Incompiuto Siciliano), in the Natural Reserve of Niscemi, Sicily (2018); and “BeMA Residency/Jezzine,” organized by BeMA (the Beirut Museum of Art) in collaboration with T.A.P (Temporary. Art. Platform) in Jezzine, Lebanon (2017). Her work has been showcased in individual and collective exhibitions. She held solo exhibitions at Galerie Janine Rubeiz in Beirut (2017) and at Gagliardi e Domke in Turin (2017).
She has received several awards for her work including: The Art Rights Prize ‘Partner Prize Award’ promoted by Isorropia Homegallery, Milan (2021); The ‘Audience Award’ in the Berlin Revolution Film Festival (2020); ‘Best Experimental Short Film’ in the Mediterranean Film Festival Cannes (2018); the YICCA - art residency in Italy - prize (2018); the Premio Ora Prize (2017); the Aomi Okabe Jury award in Art Olympia, Tokyo (2017); and the Arte Laguna Prize in the 'Sculpture and Installation category,’ Venice (2015).