Informed by his training in architecture and sculpture, Rayanne Tabet investigates major sociopolitical events, delving into historical documents and cultural heritage to explore the wide-ranging impact of the past on the present. Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation for Sharjah Biennial 12 (2015), Cyprus (2015) features a wooden fishing boat, pulleys and a steel anchor. Tabet’s father rented the boat in 1987 to flee to Cyprus with his family during the Lebanese civil war. It soon became evident that the boat was not equipped to withstand the treacherous crossing, and so the journey was aborted. Decades later, in 2012, while travelling along the northern coastline of Jbeil in Lebanon, Tabet’s family came across the same boat, still resting on the shore where it had been abandoned years earlier, by happenstance. Drawing on his early childhood recollection of the failed escape attempt, Tabet transforms the boat into an object of history that examines both personal and collective memory.