Patriot Art

Born in Beirut and of Lebanese and Roman culture, Nadine Fattouh is now a gallery owner in Paris. Every year, she organises several exhibitions and she is specialised in the promotion of artists from the Maghreb and Middle East areas.

Paris: love at first sight

Barely anything would have pushed Nadine Fattouh to work in the art industry, where she is now. Born in Beirut from a Lebanese father and a mother of Roman origin, she grew up by speaking in the common language of the couple: French. In 1989, her family leave a Lebanon at war to go to Paris.

The city is intertwined with her awakening to art. Nadine Fattouh marvels at everything: the insane number of museums, the symmetry of façades, the balance of masses and volumes, etc. She naturally chooses art studies in the école du Louvre, where she specialises in ancient arts. Eager to transfer her passion, she will teach there for five years.

Freedom, I write your name

Freedom is the most common word pronounced by Nadine Fattouh. It has been a feeling battered as early as her childhood during her many stays in Rumania. She reminds with pleasure the most vivid hide-and-seek plays in the streets of Bucharest, a city nonetheless gagged by the dictatorship of the Ceausescu couple.

It's certainly this quest for freedom that drove the young woman’s decision to leave the education sector. In 2001, she entered the art market and joined the Jacques Leegenhoek gallery of ancient paintings, in the Carré Rive Gauche.

Exile in sharing

The double culture from which came Nadine Fattouh comes from feed her artistic choices. Though the young woman "embraced French culture" as soon as she arrived in Paris, she has quickly been "caught up by her roots". In 2008, she decided to focus on artists from the Middle East, though without being exclusive.

The gallery owner maintains a strong relation with the artists she exhibits; many of them are exiled, just like her. With great admiration, she speaks about Marwan, an 81 years old Syrian artist living in Berlin for whom she organised a small retrospective. This admiration is even more significant that she herself acknowledges that she is "not able to paint, or to transfer her emotions with colours".

An unresolved writing

Nadine Fattous may be awkward with pencils, but she handles French language with a remarkable precision and sense for the right words. She defines her occupation as a "gold prospector". Her goal: to discover a new artist that will give her this deep emotion, that she may then share with others. As enthusiastic as when she begun, she would like to own her own gallery someday, in Paris or any other city.

Though she seems happy of the way she took, she is open to other perspectives. But she knows that any other prospect will come from art. Will she ever come back to Lebanon? The young woman prefers not to say anything. According to her own words, the potential project is an "unresolved writing".

Photo credits: ©Pierre Le Tulzo / Animal pensant