iFoam Fotografiemuseum AmsterdamGrachtengordel
Myriam Boulos - A Collective Diary: Sexual Fantasies
First museum solo show of Lebanese photographer Myriam Boulos, 19th Foam Paul Huf Award winner: a collective diary centred on her series Sexual Fantasies, mostly made in Beirut.
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You walk in past a text Boulos wrote about Israel's violence in Palestine and Lebanon, then into very recent pictures from the war, hung among shots of her sister and her partner doing hormone injections for egg-freezing. The first room jumps back to her black-and-white Beirut nights, 2011 to 2014.
This is the first museum solo show of Myriam Boulos, the Beirut photographer who won the 19th Foam Paul Huf Award. It draws on four series, Looking for tenderness, What's Ours, Sexual Fantasies and Fragments of a collective diary in times of war, which Foam presents as one personal diary. Boulos told Ocula that most of the rest is Sexual Fantasies: women who answered her open calls, each deciding how to be photographed.
It puts desire and protest side by side, and one series was made in wartime, so it isn't a light visit. Entry is the €16 museum ticket, free with a Museumkaart and for under-12s. Foam stays open until 21:00 on Thursdays and Fridays.
Look for
Sexual Fantasies
Look for the portraits of women who answered Boulos's 2021 Instagram call to share their sexual fantasies, shown with texts in their own words.
What's Ours
Aperture calls it a diaristic portrait of a city in revolution; from the 2019 uprising on, Boulos wrote diary lines and fragments of conversations into her images.
Looking for tenderness
Begun in 2018, it photographs people in their intimate spaces, because Boulos was looking for tenderness in a Beirut she describes as built on destruction.
The black-and-white nights, 2011-2014
The first room is her earliest series, shot at night in Beirut, when she says the city's social life suddenly appears.
The burned portrait
A picture of the man she was with for six years, abusively, with his image burned and "narcissistic pervert" written beside his head.
Good for
- Evening Visits
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want a light afternoon: it opens on Lebanon's current war, and most of the rest is sexual fantasies.
With kids
Children up to 12 get in free, but the show is about sexuality, sexual fantasy and violence, so check it suits your kids first.
Free in the same building
Plan a visit to Foam Fotografiemuseum AmsterdamAlso at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam
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Image credits
9
- Myriam Boulos - A Collective Diary: Sexual Fantasies© Myriam Boulos
- Marcos Kueh: PRESENTCourtesy of Museum Van Loon
- Plantation along the CanalCourtesy of Amsterdam Museum
- Plantation along the Canal: Stories of People and PowerCourtesy of Museum Willet-Holthuysen
- Foam Fotografiemuseum AmsterdamDqfn13 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL
- Museum Van LoonRijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Amsterdam MuseumJvhertum, Public domain
- Museum Willet-HolthuysenJane023 / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- Allard PiersonAndy Li (Onthewings), Wikimedia Commons, CC0