The Sursock Museum in partnership with Instituto Guimarães Rosa – Beirut and the Embassy of Brazil in Lebanon is pleased to present A Comet in Your Eyes, a dual exhibition bringing together new productions by Panos Aprahamian (LB) and Janaina Wagner (BR). Set against the backdrop of Brazil’s landscape, the installations tell tales of present doomsday and cosmic longing, offering a harsh reflection on today’s modern world.
Janaina Wagner’s video installation When the Second Sun Arrives / A Comet in Your Eyes, which lends its title to the exhibition, is the final part of her trilogy revolving around the Trans-Amazonian Highway BR-230. Initiated in the 1970s, the mega-modernist project disrupted ecosystems, livelihoods, and traditions. In the installation, the arrival of a second sun interrupts this ongoing devastation, upending time and space.
The Vanguard Outside of History is a two-channel video installation by Panos Aprahamian, blending fictional tales with documentary realism. The artist takes on an investigator’s role in search of the motivations that led Ypsilon, a young Brazilian of Lebanese-Palestinian descent, to the deserts of Syria. The vanguard’s figure is reimagined, driven by a belief in extraterrestrial warriors and intergalactic solidarity. In a burning world, where climate catastrophe has emerged as an inescapable horizon, what future can we still summon? By touching on the cosmos, the works of Aprahamian and Wagner depart from Earth’s finitude and usher in a new era ––one that both avenges and redeems.
Press release from the Sursock Museum
Image: Janaina Wagner. Still image from When the Second Sun Arrives. 2024. Image courtesy of the artist
