Among this year’s international guests of Kundura DocLab, the documentary platform of Beykoz Kundura, will be the Lebanese theater director, actor, visual artist and playwright Rabih Mroué. Rabih Mroué, an award-winning and widely discussed name in the international world of contemporary art, theater and performance for works that question political unrest in the Middle East and social uprisings in Lebanon, will appear before Istanbul audiences with two different shows.

Addressing political unrest in the Middle East and social uprisings in Lebanon in a body of work that began in the ’90s and has continued without interruption, Rabih Mroué is known for works that have been banned in his home country and have caused a sensation in the international art world. Producing performances and videos that question the role of the audience, the social significance of the actor and the spatiality of space, the artist explores and interrogates universal themes such as memory, power and the construction of truth in pursuit of historical and personal narratives. Blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction by using archival materials such as diaries, photographs and videos, the artist creates works that focus on provoking thought rather than putting on a show.

Praised by The New York Times with the words “Mroué is to Beirut what the Wooster Group is to New York: a mix of avant-garde innovation, conceptual variety and political urgency, with a worldly sense of humor,” the artist says his work deals with “issues that have been swept under the table in Lebanon’s current political climate.”

The artist has had solo exhibitions at many major museums and galleries, including MoMA (New York, 2015), Kunsthalle (Mulhouse, 2015), SALT (Istanbul, 2014), Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid, 2013), Documenta (Kassel, 2012), Kunstverein (Stuttgart, 2011) and BAK (Utrecht, 2010), and his works are held in the collections of MoMA, Centre Pompidou, SFMOMA, CA2M, MACBA and the Van Abbe Museum Rotterdam. Also a co-founder of the Beirut Art Center, Mroué has been writing and directing short documentaries and animated films for Lebanon’s Future TV channel since 1995.