I Was Seven The Day I Came Back Home Completely Soaked by Gilbert Hage at Galerie Tanit, Beirut

March 12, 2026 to April 23, 2026

Artist: Gilbert Hage

Galerie Tanit, Mar Mikhael, Beirut, Lebanon

Link: galerietanit.com/exhibitions/i-was-seven-the-day-i-came-back-home-completely-soaked/

I was Seven The Day I came Back Home Completely Soaked, 2026, Pigmented print mounted on Aluminum, Edition 1 of 5 + 2Ap

Gilbert Hage
Cherine Yazbeck from the series I Was Seven The Day I Came Back Home Completely Soaked
2026
Pigmented Print Mounted on Aluminum
110 cm x141 cm
Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP

Gilbert Hage
I Hated You Already Because of the Lies I Had Told You #2
2011
Fine Art Pigmented Print Mounted on Aluminum
110 cm x 110 cm
Edition 1 of 5

Gilbert Hage
Claudia Khachan from the series I Was Seven The Day I Came Back Home Completely Soaked
2026
Pigmented Print Mounted on Aluminum
110 cm x 141cm
Edition 1 o3 + 1 AP

Gilbert Hage
I Hated You Already Because of the Lies I Had Told You #6
2011
Fine Art Pigmented Print Mounted on Aluminum
110 cm x 110 cm
Edition 1 of 5

Gilbert Hage
Elie Mouhanna from the series I Was Seven The Day I Came Back Home Completely Soaked
2026
Pigmented Print Mounted on Aluminum
110 cm x141 cm
Edition 1 of 3 + 1 AP

Gilbert Hage
I Could Have Reached Early on That Specific Day
2019
Pigmented Print on Fine Art Paper
60 cm x 68.5 cm
Edition 2 of 5

Gilbert Hage
Bloody Pig on Pink Background #3
2026
Pigmented Print on Fine Art Paper Mounted on Aluminum
43 cm x 33.5 cm
Edition 1 of 5

Gilbert Hage
It's a Wonderful World #171
2021
Pigmented Print on Fine Art Paper Unframed
32 x 23 cm with margins
Edition 1 of 5

Gilbert Hage
It's a Wonderful World #062
2021
Pigmented Print on Fine Art Paper Unframed
32 x 23 cm with margins
Edition 2 of 5

Gilbert Hage
They Never Spoke to Me With This Kind of Tenderness
2023
Pigmented Print on Fine Art Paper
60 cm x 76.6 cm
Edition 2 of 5

Gilbert Hage
Phone Ethics 20
2006
Inkjet Print on FA Paper Mounted on Aluminum
15 cm x 19.5 cm
Edition 2 of 3

Gilbert Hage
Phone Ethics 03
2006
Inkjet Print on FA Paper Mounted on Aluminum
15 cm x 19.5 cm
Edition 2 of 3

Gilbert Hage
Phone Ethics 05
2006
Inkjet Print on FA Paper Mounted on Aluminum
15 cm x 19.5 cm
Edition 2 of 3

Gilbert Hage
It's a Wonderful World #149
2021
Pigmented Print on Fine Art Paper Unframed
32 x 23 cm with margins
Edition 3 of 5

Gilbert Hage
Stories From the Sea #3
2024
Pigmented Print on Fine Art Paper
31.5 cm x 41.5 cm
Edition 2 of 3

Across the artist’s œuvre, there is no fixed method; each project invents the conditions of its own emergence. Human and nonhuman, nature and apparatus, function as co-agents within shifting configurations.

Dancing in the Rain was the initial call though the setup involved no choreography and no actual rain, yet each participant stood exposed to water, wet beneath a shower. From encounter to encounter, the work evolved. The invitation opens Blanchot’s infinite conversation: relation without resolution. The call continued as I Was Seven the Day I Came Home Completely Soaked, a title that does not so much recall an event as establish a condition: exposure, return, a body altered by water. It situates the work in time while refusing narrative closure. The significance lies not in what occurred, running beneath a sudden downpour, tripping and falling into a pool, but in what persists when bodies are exposed to water. Water sets rhythm, adhesion, resistance, and surface tension. Skin becomes membrane; garments become weighted surfaces; breath gathers above saturated torsos.

From Muybridge’s chronophotographic serial instants to Man Ray’s luminous traces, from Halsman’s jumpology at gravity’s apex to Mendieta’s earth-body imprints, artists have tested suspension and the aesthetics of the any-instant-whatever. Hage seems to register the pull of these precedents, alongside Matisse’s La Piscine (1952). If the monumentality of his installation recalls Viola’s Tristan’s Ascension (The Sound of a Mountain Under a Waterfall) (2005) where water stages ascent toward a transcendent horizon, Hage’s water anchors. Fabric drags; breath meets resistance; duration thickens rather than dissolves.

In the installation, men together and women together form a kind of horizon across the gallery walls. The work surrounds without enclosing. What unfolds is not communion. No shared rhythm gathers the bodies into unity. Presence as edge enacting Blanchot’s neuter. They remain proximate, without coincidence. Relation persists through interval. Separation is enacted in and through the medium of water, across successive encounters. Bare exteriority persists, desire in distance

 Text by Ghada Waked

Artist Biography 

Gilbert Hage is a photographer. He lives, teaches and works in Lebanon.

He explores socio-political systems through his practice, probing the position of the human being within these structures. Characterized by large-scale formats, his work invites viewers into a physical, immersive experience.

His works have been exhibited regularly at Galerie Tanit, Beirut and Paris Photo in addition to Galerie Tanit, Munich (2022, 2012, 2004), Art Lab Berlin (2022, 2019), Abbaye de Jumièges, France (2022), Halle 14, Leipzig (2022), Soma Art Gallery, Cairo (2022), Villa Empain, Brussels (2021), Galerie 8 + 4, Paris (2021), Beirut Contemporary Art Space, Lisbon (2021), Galerie Marina Bastianello, Venice (2021), Villa Romana, Florence (2019), Voga Art Project, Bari (2019), Studio la Citta, Verona (2019), Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2019), Venice Biennale of Architecture (2018), Photo London (2018), Bienal Sur, Argentine (2017), Galerie Ygrec, Paris (2017), Art Paris (2017), Hellerau Dresden (2017), Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai (2016), Beirut Exhibition Center (2015), Art 13 London (2013), Arts Santa Monica, Barcelone (2013), Katara, Doha (2012), Photo Museum (2012), Anvers, Belgium, Espace Naila Kettaneh Kunigk, Beirut (2012, 2009), Museum of Photography Thessaloniki (2011), Royal College of Art, London (2011), Les Rencontres d’Arles, France (2011), Sharjah Biennial (2011), White Box, Munich (2010), the French Cultural Center, Beirut (2010), Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros, Hungary (2007), Modern Art Oxford (2006), House of World Cultures, Berlin (2005), Galerie Alice Mogabgab, Beirut (2004, 2002, 1999), and Videobrasil, São Paulo (2003).

He is the co-publisher and co-editor, with Jalal Toufic, of Underexposed Books.

Gilbert Hage’s works are part of the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Thessaloniki, Greece) and the Saradar Foundation (Beirut, Lebanon).