About Artist G!
Artist G! trained as a neuroscientist before turning to art. He earned a PhD in neuroscience in Paris in the 1990s, and until 2013 taught cognitive science and art theory in Beirut, alongside research into the neuroscience of racial bias — work that still shapes how he thinks about what an image does to the person looking at it.
In 2009 he published his first book, Can One Man Save the (Art) World?, and began a series of interventions treating the institutions of art — its markets, its labour, its blind spots — as material in their own right. In 2010 he curated a solo exhibition of Mahmoud Obaidi at Art Dubai, with an accompanying publication.
In 2011, he was appointed curator and commissioner of the Lebanese Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (L’Orient-Le Jour), staging a neo-Situationist intervention titled “institutional void” at the heart of the Arsenale. His work from that period was presented at the March Meeting of the Sharjah Art Foundation the same year.
In 2013 he turned to art full-time and launched The Better World Project, whose portraits of Palestinians and United Nations staff were shown in 2014 as part of the official events of the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. A special edition in 2015, Signing with Light, was documented in the book The G.U.L.F. for the GulfLabor.org coalition, which campaigns for the rights of migrant workers in the Gulf. Since 2018 the project has continued in Europe as live action painting, made in real time with the people watching.
That movement — away from depicting a subject, toward asking people to take part — is deliberate. Drawing on his research, Artist G! has argued that showing images of violence and injustice makes the viewer a witness and little more, and rarely has the effect the artist intends; what changes anything is participation.
A R K, begun in 2020, is where that line of work leads: portraits drawn in a single unbroken stroke, gathered as an archive for a future intelligence that will ask what it is to be human. He described it in those terms as early as 2021, in an interview with Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto, the foundation established by Michelangelo Pistoletto, published around his participation in the #Interferenze festival in Latina, Italy. The project has also supported COVID-19 research at the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome. A R K is open to everyone.
Born in Beirut, of Armenian and Syrian descent, he lives and works in Paris. He is currently a nominator for the Prix Pictet.
For a longer portrait, see “Artist G: From the Neuroscience of Bias to the Architecture of Presence” on the Human Light Archive.
A R K grows through participation.
During each residency or public session, anyone may submit a portrait to be drawn — a single, unbroken line, held for as long as the sitting takes. The drawing becomes part of the archive: catalogued, and intended to outlast the moment it was made in.
How to take part
In person — during a scheduled session, a portrait is drawn directly, in real time.
By submission — send a photograph, and a line drawing will be made from it and added to the archive.
To submit a portrait or inquire about an upcoming session, please get in touch.