Lebanese artist Walid Raad rose to international acclaim in the early 2000s with The Atlas Group, established in Lebanon in 1999 with Raad as its only known member. The Atlas Group intended to “research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon.” In other words, like other post-civil war artists of his generation, this project formulated an attempt to work in response to the events of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the effects of which still resonate with the Lebanese people. In a series of works linked to The Atlas Group’s archive, the thin lines between fact and fiction, history and the imaginary, the production and construction of memory, and the documented and the performed are continuously blurred. Raad has continued to work on these themes in his current work.

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