alaa minawi resides in Lebanon; a country that has vast borders with Syria. With the plight of many Syrian families and individuals finding refuge in Lebanon (some estimates speak of over 1.5 million persons), alaa has been working as a freelance interpreter with Syrian, Iraqi and Sudanese refugees. The work comes with an approach to further understand what it is that these refugees have succumbed to on the ground, but also what it is that they aspire to. He has interpreted for more than 1000 families, and has during this process noticed that refugees, who are almost always susceptible to their reality, can easily be ‘detected’. They have an aura; some kind of glow that radiates from within them. alaa began to construct his installation around the concept of refugees embodying outlines of a fragile light.

Every refugee comes with an extraordinary story to tell, and one that almost seeps out of their bodies... They are eager to try and tell the world what has occurred, and what is occurring. alaa minawi is himself a Palestinian refugee, his father was a refugee, and so was his grandfather.

The figures are of sizes that range between 75cm and 180cm. Each are placed on a metal platform that is 20 x 40 x 60 cm.

The overall weight of each figure varies between 35 and 45 kilograms.

The figures are waterproof and will be presented both indoors and outdoors.

alaa minawi (1982) is a Palestinian-Lebanese visual artist currently living and working in Beirut, Lebanon as a lighting designer and writer. With a BA in Communication arts from the Lebanese American University, alaa has since 2006 worked in film, photography and theatre both in the Arab world and the USA with more than 300 different projects. alaa first started experimenting with light sources in 2010 and has since developed a number of different collaborations in the field of lighting-design with many established artists such as Robert Wilson, Jawad Al Assadi, Andrey Barteniv, Tania Saleh, Lina Abyad and many others.

alaa has also recently been working on his own artistic creations, in 2011 he started a sound and light experiment that lead to [piano in my pillow], a collaboration with improvisation pianist, Vladimir kurumilian, and in 2013, his light installation ‘beyond myself...’ was successfully premiered during the Amsterdam Light Festival, where he returns this year with a second light-installation entitled ‘my light is your light...’