The seventeen-year-long
Lebanese war ended in 1990. Soon after, a short text of statistics was published
in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and Le Monde. It read: “150.000
dead, 200.000 wounded, 17.500 disappeared, 3641 car bombs etc.” Nada
Sehnaoui was astounded to see that seventeen years of a horrific war, which
affected every aspect of life, had been reduced into such a curt text. In
reaction to this, the artist produced a series of paintings entitled Lebanese
War Statistics, which was her first conceptual body of work using
the short text published in the press.
