Lebanese War Statistics

The seventeen-year-long Lebanese war ended in 1990. Soon after, a short text of statistics was published in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and Le Monde. It read: “150.000 dead, 200.000 wounded, 17.500 disappeared, 3641 car bombs etc.” Nada Sehnaoui was astounded to see that seventeen years of a horrific war, which affected every aspect of life, had been reduced into such a curt text. In reaction to this, the artist produced a series of paintings entitled Lebanese War Statistics, which was her first conceptual body of work using the short text published in the press.