Featured Artist: Flavia Codsi

By ArteEast

Fall 2007 | Gallery

ArteEast continues to bring you the best of the Beirut art scene with its fall 2007 Virtual Gallery exhibition featuring the work of painter Flavia Codsi. Codsi redefines realism and modernism by painting classic subjects in ways that shake up typical art historical chronologies and preconceived notions of contemporary Lebanese art. Her paintings of fruit and figures are far from straightforward portrayals of “reality” but rather investigations into what constitutes reality in a besieged country. Her work captures tensions between the seen and unseen, the particular and the universal, between pleasure and fear, candor and constraint. Viewers will also find comments on the body, gender, art world politics and history, and war. Codsi’s work has garnered prestigious prizes in Lebanon, and ArteEast is pleased to bring her work to new audiences.

Bio:

Flavia Codsi is a painter who was born in Beirut in 1961 and continues to work there. Self-trained in painting and drawing, she earned a degree in interior design and worked in that field for several years. he entered the world of public art exhibitions by winning the Dorothy Salhab Kazemi prize at the Salon d’Automne of Sursock Museum in 1994. The following year she took special mention from the jury at the same Salon, and capped her success with the first prize in painting at the 1996 Salon. She also participated in numerous unconventional fora, such as Ashkal Alwan’s installation show in Sanayeh Garden, the collective Sydney-Beirut, Beirut-Sydney held in Australia in 1999, and “Nisa fi-l- ma`rad” at Nadi al-Saha in 2001. Her one woman exhibitions in Lebanon include “Phases” at Espace SD in 2003 and “Fructivores” at Galerie Aida Cherfan in 2006. In 1998 she illustrated a children’s book, The Houses of Beirut, by Nayla Audi.

Links to other articles on Flavia Codsi’s work:

http://www.cedarseed.com/air/dsflavia.html

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=82347

Tags