My name is Ali Cherri. I was born in Beirut.
I'm an artist and filmmaker.
My early work was really related to the history of Lebanon and Beirut.
My work was really attached to questions
that are related to the experience I had growing up in a war-torn city.
I work a lot with geographies, post-violence
and how violence leaves traces in the landscape
on the earth, on trees, on people's bodies
so really looking at material manifestation of traumatic experiences.
That was what led me to look at paintings
that were vandalised inside The National Gallery.
Why would someone decide at some point
to walk into the museum and destroy a work of art?
I spent a lot of time in the archives of the museum
looking at the dossier of each painting
sometimes with accounts of incidents that happened.
The title of my work is “If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
This voice, taken of course from Shakespeare
became, in a way, like the voice of the paintings.
It's like they are telling us that they also bleed
and we need to care for their wounds.
I was interested in bringing objects inside The National Gallery.
From the beginning, I was sure that I was not going to use the walls
and I would have things displayed in these empty spaces that are left between paintings.
The Rokeby Venus painting by Velázquez
was slashed several times by the suffragettes.
It has been almost 100 years since the attack happened.
I wanted to comment on this act of violence that happened
in a return of a more archaic form of representation.
What we see here is a wooden sculpture
and next to it is this marble head that is facing down on this mirror again
where we can see this face through the mirror.
This cabinet is sitting right in front of this Botticelli
where you see the lying figure
and when you look through the glass, through the cabinet
both figures seem to be really in the same posture
almost in dialogue with each other.
Leonardo da Vinci's The Burlington House Cartoon
received a gunshot in 1987
one single bullet that left a mark, an indent, on the body of the work.
I decided to take an archive image of the impact of the bullet
and to enlarge it 600% with all the details.
The reason why I decided to place this cabinet here
is because it's sitting in front of Saint Sebastian
where the blood is coming out of several wounds
and it becomes sort of a dialogue of two different types of wounds.
One wound that is allowed to remain visible in the museum
and another that, today, has become invisible.
This is the best part about having this artist residency
is to have access to the museum almost any time of the day.
Just being in the building is something quite inspiring.
You feel like you're totally, literally, immersed in the experience
of being in the museum
the smell, the noise.
Before walking into The National Gallery
is not the same after walking out.