Marwan Sahmarani was born in Lebanon in 1970. With an archetypal biography specific to his generation, he left his birth city Beirut in 1989, and moved to Paris to study at l’École Supérieur d’Art Graphique. He now lives and works in Montreal. After a seven year hiatus from the art world, as of 2002 he held several group and solo exhibitions in Beirut, Dubai, Montreal, New York and Ireland. Sahmarani’s artwork is linked to his Middle Eastern origins. His oil paintings, drawings, ceramics and performative work are a reflection upon the mediums themselves and their support in the face of sociopolitical problems. In 2006 Beirut’s Fadi Mogabgab Contemporary Art Gallery hosted a mid career retrospective of his works charting his shifting palettes but steadfast political agendas over a 15 year period that won critical acclaim. In 2007 Dubai’s The Third Line invited him to show a series called “Can You teach me how to fight?” The paintings and drawings in this exhibition retrace the battles that occurred between the 10th and 14th centuries in the Middle East. The pieces are a prophetic and timely reminder of the cyclic histories of violence in a region where invasion is a constant self-perpetuating reality. CV.doc