Pascal Hachem

The work of Pascal Hachem, whether through performances or installations, often starts with a diversion. Trained as an engineer, his knowledge of engines and materials give him a particular stance which he applies in creating artefacts and (often mechanized) installations. He uses daily objects and manages to extract their nature and their primary identity thanks to unusual associations and layouts. These machines inevitably cause a feeling of strangeness but paradoxically appear strangely familiar to whoever looks at them. A series of hammers slowly destroying a wall in a paced and almost liturgical motion, a t-shirt gradually torn under the weight of an accumulation of sand, knives gently emerging from a desert. These devices all unsettle the viewer whilst entailing issues of a political, social or environmental nature.

Pascal Hachem was born in 1979 in Lebanon. In 2002, he graduated in Spatial Design from the USEK. He then became creative director at Pslab and at the same time taught design at the American University of Beirut.

He has taken part in several group shows and in particular in Hopes and Doubts, the Mario Merz Foundation in Turin and Beirut in 2008/2009, Fabrica : Les Yeux ouverts, Notebook project at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Milan Triennial in 2006/2007. His works have also been presented in solo shows in London, Istanbul, Freiburg, Amman as well as Rome. Pascal Hachem currently lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon.