Walid Raad

Walid Raad was born in 1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon, and is based between Beirut and New York. Working across installation, performance, video, photography and mixed media, he examines how historical events involving physical and psychological violence affect bodies, minds, culture and narrative. Having grown up during the Lebanese Civil War, Raad moved to the United States in the early 1980s. He received a BFA in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1989, followed by an MA and a PhD in Cultural and Visual Studies from the University of Rochester in 1993 and 1996 respectively. Raad’s practice brings together historical research, archival material and speculative fiction to investigate the representation of conflict and collective trauma. His long-term project The Atlas Group (1989–2004) focused on the contemporary history of Lebanon, with particular emphasis on the Lebanese wars of 1975–1990. Presented through a fictional foundation, the project assembled found and produced photographs, films, sound recordings and literary documents whose uncertain status complicates conventional distinctions between historical evidence and imaginative construction. Through these materials, Raad questions how images and narratives transmit memory and shape public understandings of physical and psychological violence. Raad joined Bard College as Professor of Photography in autumn 2024, following an appointment there as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Photography. He has also served as Professor of Art at The Cooper Union. Raad is a member of the Arab Image Foundation, a Beirut-based organisation devoted to the research, preservation and study of photographic practices and collections from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab diaspora. His work has been presented internationally at documenta 11, 13 and 14; the 50th Venice Biennale; the Whitney Biennial; and the 14th Istanbul Biennial. Major institutional exhibitions have been held at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Whitechapel Gallery, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and Museo Jumex, Mexico City. His publications and artist’s books include The Truth Will Be Known When the Last Witness Is Dead, My Neck Is Thinner Than a Hair and Let’s Be Honest, the Weather Helped, extending his investigation of archives, historical narrative and visual culture into printed form. Across his multifaceted practice, Raad explores how histories of violence are recorded, preserved and communicated. By deliberately entangling fact and fiction, he draws attention to the instability of archives and to the ways collective understandings of the past are produced, mediated and transformed.