RIMA SAMMAN
Le bonheur tue

«I spent my life fleeing from the dark images, which I now recover, to exorcise the suffering of the past». Samman and her family -the most in Lebanon- experienced directly the drama of war. For years, the French-Lebanese artist hand-coloured her family photos, adding the colour that was missing, to preserve the joyful memory of a lost paradise. So the idealised images of the country she left behind mingle today with photos and news reports depicting the war, and the dramatic present.

BIO

Rima Samman (Tripoli, Lebanon, 1966) is a French-Lebanese multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, actress and producer.

She published two photobooks with text by Sylvain Prudhomme, and Jean-Yves Jouannais. Her works have been exhibited at Paris Photo, UNSEEN, MENART, in several photography and contemporary art festivals and fairs. In 2024, she finished her hybrid feature film Dans le cœur une hirondelle, which was screened at some fifteen festivals in France and abroad, and won two awards. Her photographs are presented in the Collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and in private collections in France, Belgium and the USA.