| Letters and Letters |

Tilt came to Beirut with an extreme interest in Lebanon’s recent history. Like any foreigner, the first thing that spoke to him was the ambient atmosphere that rules the mind of the older generations. I

Interested in literature and specialized in lettering, he was looking for a poem, a text, even a quote from a Lebanese writer that could best express the way we feel about our country. For this, he came to me and many Lebanese to ask about famous Lebanese writers and it couldn't fit better when we showed him what Amin Maalouf’s wrote in his latest book “Les désorientés”.

The style, the words chosen, the emotions shared, sparkled almost instantly in the artist’s mind, this book is about our civil war, and the text chosen is about memories concerning unanswered letters of the writer, Tilt found the text he was looking for and decided to dedicate his art to Amin Malouf.

Tilt wrote the text to show a plea that is still bleeding, crippled, cracked and old - all part of the artist’s intention, a plea that could never heal after so many years, the choice of its color is non-other then Tilt’s famous “bubble pink”, once again, the area is well targeted, Ain el Remeneh, a public school, to remind us that war pleas really never ends, and to honor the martyrs and the wounded, so we can never forget, forgive surely, but never forget what the war has done to us.

All the lost lives, commemorated here in Tilt’s piece of work, for me, are a plea that always resurfaces in our mind, I believe it is mostly good to remember this pain, it might hurt, but it surely makes me more compassionate and more humble with an uncertain pacifism that I constantly share toward the others…

Text by Amin Maalouf:

"J'ai précieusement conservé ces lettres, mais je n'ai pas le souvenir d'y avoir répondu.

S'il était compliqué, à l'époque, de recevoir le courrier du pays, il était bien plus hasardeux encore de l'y faire parvenir. La poste ayant cessé de fonctionner, il fallait recourir aux services d'un voyageur, afin qu'il le transmette de la main à la main. Une mission qui pouvait se révéler périlleuse. Le porteur devait parfois se rendre dans une zone de combats ; et s'il ne voulait pas courir de risques, et qu'il demandait au destinataire de venir chercher son enveloppe lui-même, c'est ce dernier qui se trouvait en danger de mort. (…) Mourad prétendait que, dans l'une de nos conversations, je lui aurais dit, pour répondre à ses reproches : « Moi je ne suis allé nulle part, c'est le pays qui est parti. » Peut-être bien que je l'ai dit. À l'époque, je le disais parfois…"

Letter by Letter

Details of the wall: