a Stretch of Water

Tarek Haddad & Laetitia Hakim (duo)
2021

The work takes allegory in the sea, both as a starting point and as a boundary. It expands on the notion of distance, exploring its repercussions on human interactions within two concurrent contexts; one instilled by the pandemic, preventing contact with one another, and a second imposed by the failing economic and political situation in the country, pushing some to leave.

Under tension, the material property of the fabric and the tension exerted through the stretching raise the question of whether we are eventually bound to attain a rupture point after which the surface cannot retract back to its original state.

now there’s a sea between us

and the closest I could be to you is a stretch of water
you and I
the sea now an extension
of you to me, of me to you
and we pull
each from our side
trying to get closer together
ever increasing the distance between us
and I worry
if we ever stopped pulling
would the sea get back to how it was
or would it have turned into an ocean

The work was stretched from 1.4m to 2.8m and hanged at Galerie Tanit, Lebanon from June 19 until August 7, 2021.
On that last day, we finally released the fabric from the tension it bore for the duration of the exhibition.

Our aim was to question its elasticity and see how it reacted or resisted to the tension exerted by the stretching.

The fabric retracted, but it became loose.
It could not go back to its initial state anymore. It had permanently morphed.