The Residue of Elsewhere

The threshold is a membrane. Having just crossed one, you have accomplished, unknowingly, a complex, invisible gesture. From līmen, the Latin for threshold, we hold liminal—an obscure suspension between two states. This is the realm of the imperceptible in-between. A moment ago, you were neither fully inside nor entirely outside. Here yet not yet here. Eased into a familiar gallery sanctum, yet still writhing in a strident Beirut beyond. You were perfectly liminal, between two postures: pre- and post-, former and latter, near and here.

This is exactly where the artist wants you.

The Visit is the culmination of Ghaddar’s deep reflections on the very notion of liminality and how it manifests itself in space and on surfaces—paper, canvas, fabric, fresco. The artist hones in on the idea of ‘the visit’ to revel in the complexity lurking below its seeming simplicity. Much like the threshold, a visit is treacherous. At once invitation (you were asked here) and invasion (you penetrate a space), no visit is innocent. Indeed, the visit occupies a curious position in the realm of liminality: it can be programmed, yet remains unpredictable; it embraces an interior, yet retreats to its own exterior; it is bound in time, yet The Residue of Elsewhere defies temporality. 

– Excerpt from the text by Kevin Jones

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