Recognizing the significance of printmaking and artist publishing within the region’s contemporary art landscape, Dongola Limited Editions launched in 2024 a long-term initiative supporting artists working at the Beirut Printmaking Studio, a unique independent artist-run space dedicated to printmaking practice, learning and experimentation in Beirut. The initiative reflects Dongola’s commitment to advancing printmaking and artist publishing across the Arab world through the commissioning and production of two artist’s books every two years.
The inaugural edition features artists Fadi Al Melhem and Ahmad Ghaddar, beginning with Al Melhem’s A Memory That Lasts and Lasts and Lasts, a project that explores questions of patriarchy, masculinity, inheritance, and the ways gender roles and identity are constructed and reinforced within Syrian society.
Printed and hand-bound by the artist, the publication is rooted in an extensive visual research process and reflects a deep commitment to craftsmanship and treating the artist’s book as both a conceptual framework and a carefully constructed object.
At its core is a collection of found family photographs from a village in southern Syria that lived through decades of authoritarian rule and political repression under the Assad regime. Many of the photographs are accompanied by handwritten notes recording dates, places, and occasions, transforming them into fragments of a social archive from which the title of the book is drawn.
Within this archive, however, a striking absence emerges: women are largely missing from both the photographs and the stories attached to them. Instead, the narrative centers on Hamdan, the eldest son, whose life unfolds through a series of milestones, from birth and childhood to military service, migration, marriage, and the formation of his own family. Through these fragments, a portrait emerges not only of an individual life but also of the social structures and expectations that shape it.
Rather than presenting these materials as historical documents, Al Melhem reworks them through his own visual language. The archive becomes a space where collective histories intersect with personal experience and imagination, opening new readings of memory, identity, and belonging.
Comprising 26 original mezzotints prints combined with silkscreen, and housed in a handmade paper box. Through its images, narratives, and carefully crafted form, the artwork invites reflection on the ways histories are inherited, identities are shaped, and memories endure across generations
