Lebanese photographer Ziad Antar uses photography and video in work where the artist's quiet and reflective stance reveals the social and political structures that influence daily life.

In 2009 Antar collaborated with curator Rasha Salti on the publication Beirut Bereft: the Architecture of the Forsaken and Map of the Derelict.  His photographs for this Sharjah Biennial commission documented the abandoned and crumbling buildings that remain a haunting legacy of Beirut's recent civil wars.

Antar has also been a 2010 Sharjah Art Foundation artist-in-residence while working on Coastline, his current series documenting the coast of the UAE.  In this work the sea becomes a symbol for the past, present and future of the rapidly changing Emirate states.

Antar has been working with photography and video since 2002 when he directed his first documentary on the French photographer Jean-Luc Moulène. He has made several documentaries for the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya.  Antar’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions including The Mediterranean Approach and The Future of a Promise, Venice, Italy (2011), Sharjah Biennial 10 (2011), the New Museum, New York (2009), the Cittadellarte, Pistoletto Foundation, Biella, Italy (2009), Sharjah Biennial (2009), Tate Modern, London (2008), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2006) La Cabane, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2005) and the Taipei Biennial, Taiwan (2008). He was nominated for the Ukrainian Pinchuk Foundation's Future Generation Prize in 2010. Ziad Antar was born in 1978 in Saida, Lebanon and now lives and works between Paris and Beirut.

Ziad Antar was born in 1978 in Saida, Lebanon and now lives and works between Paris and Beirut.

January 2012