By Marc Tarazi
Gebran Tarazi, born in Damascus in 1944, is a Lebanese writer and artist who comes from a family of antique dealers and craftsmen going back several generations. His Tarazi family had settled in Beirut since 1860, and was also known for publishing postcards portraying the history of the Levant. Gebran Tarazi spent his childhood in Morocco, in an ambiance of the ancient and catholic France which is multicultural and multi-religious at the same time, where his father Alfred settled to pursue the antiques trade in Rabat and hotel business in Rabat and Casablanca. He took the family name of Sidi Gaby, given to him by one of the family’s Moroccan workers in Rabat. Gebran Tarazi also holds a Law degree from Saint Joseph University of Beirut under the name of Gabriel Tarazi. During the atrocious Lebanese civil war (1974-1989), his father Alfred refused to leave Beirut. It was a very painful period, as the dangers haunted him and the traditional Arab woodworking imposed on him prevented him from pursuing his career as a writer and novelist. At the end of the civil war, he left Beirut and settled in Ballouneh in 1988, with many war-related traumas.
His last adventure in handicrafts soon turned into a new experience in contemporary art, a creative energy that liberated him from his pain. A small rectangular module, beautifully designed by Gebran Tarazi, with an archway inside, was minced in metal and copper to build oriental wooden mirrors and boxes, using this module vertically repeatedly. The possibility of using the same module in a rotating movement within a square, that’s to say two horizontal and two vertical modules, under the name of Qayem-Nayem, soon opened up infinite possibilities. This universal pattern was quickly developed into a geometric philosophy by Gebran Tarazi.
The line between original artisanship and contemporary art remains blurred. This dialectic is both the infinite richness of Gebran Tarazi’s work and a difficult problem to manage and communicate, since it claims to be both a contemporary oriental art, and Arabic art even sometimes, rather than an ancestral family tradition, which he could not ignore.
As for his convergence with Islamic art or certain aspects of it, Gebran Tarazi asserted that he was an Arab-Christian and preferred to unite with the greats of modern art. However, for some art critics, although Gebran Tarazi was a Christian artist, the appellation of Islamic art developed by Western researchers regarding a historical and political period, and not necessarily a theological one, is a possibility to be tackled for the study of the contemporary version of Islamic art. Besides, the traditional art practiced by his Christian family fits into this historical and contextual categorization of the Arab world, which can include both very Christian and Islamic objects in a perfect aesthetic harmony and communion.
Gebran Tarazi published a book in French/Arabic in 2007 entitled Variations Géométriques, which contains his manifesto, and where he explains his artistic vision and philosophy. In 2017, the family published a second book in Paris, more detailed and in French/English, entitled Twelve Seasons, in reference to the artist’s 12 chronological series, in which the influence of traditional art (dark colors) dissipates in the last series, which become very colorful.
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