About me

Flavia Malusardi is a PhD candidate in History of Art as part of the LAWHA project, with an international position between Università Cà Foscari (Venice) and OIB Orient-Institut Beirut. Her project investigates the role of gallerist Janine Rubeiz and her informal space Dar el Fan (1967-1976) within the Lebanese cultural panorama. She holds a Master’s degree in History of Art and Architecture of the Islamic Middle East from SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies (London) and a MFA in Visual Cultures and Curatorial Practice from Brera Fine Arts Academy (Milan). Her work focuses on the contemporary arts and visual culture of the Middle East and North Africa, with an interest in archival and collecting practices within post-colonial contexts. She lived in Cairo and Dubai, where she worked with international galleries and curators. She is the editor of Vista Sud a bi-monthly column featured in Osservatorio Futura, a platform and Turin-based gallery devoted to contemporary arts. 
 

Project description

Flavia Malusardi is conducting a PhD in History of the Arts at Cà Foscari University of Venice within the ERC-funded project LAWHA – Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad, hosted by the Orient-Institut Beirut, part of the Max Weber Foundation. LAWHA examines the forces that have shaped the emergence of a professional field of art in Lebanon within its local, regional and global context. The project proposes a shift of perspective in approaching Lebanon’s art world by focusing on the multi-dimensionality of artists’ individual trajectories. The PhD is bound to a specific topic, that of Women Artists in Lebanon’s Art World. 

Within this frame, Flavia’s research project focuses on the cultural centre Dar el Fan w-el Adab (House of Arts and Literature) active in Beirut from 1967 to 1975. Dar el Fan was founded by cultural advocate Janine Rubeiz (1926-1993), who was as well a political activist and a supporter of women empowerment. The research attempts at reading the cultural program of the space and its reception against the scenario of deep historical and political transformations happening in the region as well as globally. Particular attention is given to the artists who collaborated with the centre and exhibited at its premises, in order to understand its importance and impact on their trajectories and careers. 

Despite being largely overlooked, Dar el Fan was extremely rich and diverse in its cultural offer and it came to constitute one of the main catalysts in the artistic and intellectual scene of Beirut, key in understanding the developments that have shaped the art scene and its audience in Lebanon. The study aims at producing a critical analysis of the centre, looking at its function and role not only as a cultural actor in Lebanon but also within a broader context. On the one side, this intends to contribute in the knowledge of the pre-Civil War art context, which remains largely unexplored in particular in terms of institutions and cultural spaces, their roles and politics. On the other, it plans to trace international linkages and connections that contextualise Lebanon’s cultural scene beyond the Arab world, highlighting a wider network on the global scale that resist the misleading idea of a monolithic and closed Arab world.