By Michel Cousins.
Tripoli, 2 September 2012:
A three-day exhibition of paintings by a Irish-Canadian artist Sibeal Foyle which contrasts images of the turmoil . . .[restrict]of Libya’s revolution last year with the serenity of the countryside and the landscape in Canada opened in Benghazi on Friday.
For the artist, the connection between the two countries is the fact that her elder sister, Mairead, had married a Libyan and moved from Galway in Ireland to Benghazi some 35 years ago while she moved to Canada in 1983, to study art.
“When the uprising started, we were all terrified for my sister and her family”, says Foyle. “She refused to leave Benghazi, but started to write poetry and sent me images and stories.” These were dispatched through a friend, Amer Benali, who had moved his family to Ottawa.
As a result, Foyle started a series of paintings focusing on the contrast between her home in Vancouver and that of her sister in Benghazi, between life in Canada and Libya. It culminated in a painting entitled Freedom in August last year when Tripoli was liberated.
This year, Foyle, who has been teaching art at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Vancouver since 1992, was awarded a British Columbia Arts Council grant to enable her to take her paintings to Benghazi and exhibit them.
The venue for the exhibition is the Engineering Group Company Building, Tariq Al- Urouba (West) Tripoli Road, opposite the petrol station near Al-Fawyhat Clinic. It is a temporary space for such an event. The artist’s sister mentioned to Benali that she was looking for a venue and he and his partners immediately offered space in their building.
It looks like being the start of a more permanent gallery. The space is being named in honour of a young 18-year-old Libyan artist, Kais Al-Hilali, who was shot during the revolution after he finished a graffiti portrait of Qaddafi. The hope is to have future exhibitions there. As it was, over 350 people attended the opening of the exhibition, having learned about it through Facebook.
It remains open until Monday.
Before returning to Canada on Wednesday, Foyle says she intends to present one of the paintings to the Libyan government.
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