page_title: Zena Assi
section_title: City Wall
hierarchical_section_title: Zena Assi / Ideas and Works / City Wall
caption_attribution_description: English: Mixed media and paper collage on canvas
context_page_description: Zena Assi is a Lebanese multidisciplinary artist.
context_section_description: Zena Assi's latest series of paintings ‘My City Wall’, are inspired by her personal experience of moving to a new place as well as the plight of immigrants who are being forced to move due to the political and economic situations in their countries. Her mixed media works speak about the emotional, social and cultural baggage due to displacement and the cross-cultural conflicts caused by migration. They deal with the struggle of questioning our own culture when faced with a new one, of tackling issues of identity when we are rewriting our own stories based on tainted memories. ‘My city is treated as a fabric, a kaleidoscope of symbols; the Calligraphy becomes graffiti on walls, the urban tissue becomes an embroidered panel; the landscape becomes the weaving of a textile treated with my portraits as miniatures and decorative illuminations’. This series of work is an attempt to put on canvas the landscape of a constantly shifting city. The notion of a vibrant secure city haven is being exposed only to see what's beneath; it is fixed on a canvas only to witness its hollow prefabricated infrastructure. ‘In Zena Assi’s works, symbols and codes accumulate; one must look closely at the paintings to distinguish every detail of which some refer to older works. Other elements of the décor are nevertheless disturbing; the recurring presence of advertising billboards and posters for consumer products, luxury items, or big companies of the Net, emphasizes that despite of the situation, life goes on and trade resumes its rights…’ 
  Inspired by Egon Schiele, himself a protégé of Gustav Klimt, Assi's work is about the weight and baggage of civilization on the ordinary person, and the link and dichotomy between the two. It often reflects the situation in Lebanon and addresses the issues of war, peace, silence, hope and individual frustration.
caption: Title: 'My City framed in colors'- Mixed media and paper collage on canvas- Year 2014
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