In 2010, contemporary arts museum BAK in Utrecht, the Netherlands, curated Rabih Mroué’s first solo exhibition, referencing the achievement of a theatre artist breaking into the fine art circuit with the exhibit’s playful title wavering between self-celebratory and self-effacing: I, the Undersigned. A few months into the exhibit, Mroué crossed out with a bold red line the big lettered title displayed on the pristine white gallery wall and graffitied in cursive Arab lettering underneath: “The People Are Demanding.” The slogan had just begun circulating among demonstrating crowds first in Tunisia and then in Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, and Egypt, in a wave of protests that soon came to be named in the media as the Arab Spring. With a single gesture, Mroué drew a line underneath his previous work and hinted at beginning a new chapter. The move from the “I” to the “we” underscored an intent to recalibrate forms and temporalities in a shifted focus from past memories to future aspirations—from an obsession with parsing and (de)ciphering a long history of civil war in Lebanon and marking the present with the signs of trauma to a collective effort to move beyond ghosts and traces to imagine what can happen in an approaching future. In the same year, Walid Raad, another Lebanese artist who also challenges disciplinary boundaries made similar surveying gestures upon a body of work

中文翻译：

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想象与想象：Walid Raad、Rabih Mroué 和阿拉伯之春

2010 年，荷兰乌得勒支的 BAK 当代艺术博物馆策划了 Rabih Mroué 的首次个展，该展览引用了一位戏剧艺术家闯入美术圈的成就，展览的标题在自我庆祝和自我谦逊之间摇摆不定：我，签字人。展览开始几个月后，Mroué 用粗体红线划掉了原始白色画廊墙上显示的大字标题，并在下面用草书阿拉伯字体涂鸦：“人民要求很高。” 这个口号刚刚开始在示威人群中流传，首先是突尼斯，然后是阿尔及利亚、约旦、也门和埃及，一波抗议浪潮很快被媒体称为阿拉伯之春。Mroué 用一个手势在他之前的作品下面画了一条线，并暗示要开始新的篇章。从“我”到“我们”的转变强调了重新校准形式和时间的意图，将焦点从过去的记忆转移到未来的愿望——从痴迷于解析和（解密）黎巴嫩内战的悠久历史和用创伤的迹象标记现在，集体努力超越鬼魂和痕迹，想象在即将到来的未来会发生什么。同年，另一位挑战学科界限的黎巴嫩艺术家瓦利德·拉德 (Walid Raad) 也对一件作品做出了类似的调查手势