Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a Beirut-based artist and audio investigator. His interest with sound and its intersection with politics originate from his background as a touring musician and facilitator of DIY music. The artists audio investigations has been used as evidence at the UK Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and as advocacy for organizations such as Amnesty International and Defense for Children International together with fellow researchers from Forensic Architecture. Abu Hamdan received his Ph.D. in 2017 from Goldsmiths College London.
In 2019, Abu Hamdan was nominated for the Turner Prize for his exhibition Earwitness Theatre and his performance After Sfx. In 2017, his film Rubber Coated Steel won the Tiger short film award at the Rotterdam International Film festival, The audience award at 25 FPS Festival in Zagreb, and the Dialog Award at European Media Art festival in Osnabruk. In 2016, he won the Nam June Paik Award for new media.
Abu Hamdan is a research fellow at Forensic Architecture and the University of Chicago’s Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, was 2017/2018 guest of the DAAD Kunstler Program in Berlin and the 2015-17 fellow at the Vera List Centre for Art and Politics at the New School in New York.
His solo presentations have taken place at Witte De With, Rotterdam (2019), Tate Modern Tanks & Chisenhale Gallery, London, Hammer Museum L.A (2018), Portikus Frankfurt (2016), Kunsthalle St Gallen (2015), Beirut in Cairo (2013), The Showroom, London (2012), Casco, Utrecht (2012). His works are part of collections at MoMA, Guggenheim, Van AbbeMuseum, Centre Pompidou and Tate Modern.
