Roy Dib's video installation Revisiting Hesitation explores preemptive funerary rituals in Beirut exhibition

Roy Dib's video installation Revisiting Hesitation (2018) was presented at Galerie Tanit in Beirut from 17 September to 10 November 2018. The work depicts a mock funeral ritual for a living man, with women administering rites and taking souvenir photos with his body, referencing Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Marat (1793). An interior monologue reveals the ritual prepares for potential death in battle, highlighting themes of loss, grief, and war. The installation is part of a series including Close to Here (2017), commissioned by the 13th Sharjah Biennial, and Here and There (2017), all set in a fictional Middle Eastern city. Projected onto the gallery's brutalist floor, the video uses chiaroscuro and shimmering light to immerse viewers. Photos from the ritual, such as Roueida 36, are displayed in an adjacent room. The work critiques endless conflict cycles in the Middle East, with a voiceover contrasting a pragmatic female narrator and an anxious male protagonist. The review appeared in the Winter 2018 issue of ArtReview Asia, written by MK Harb.