Beirut sits upright, carrying sorrows in her womb, yet she beholds
the entire nation on her lap.
She is the mother of a nation, the mother of all mothers, who
stood strong against all odds and insecurities, fighting tragic wars and violence.
In "Poems of Love and War", Nadia Tueni's describes
Beirut as "a courtesan, scholar, or saint, / a peninsula of dun, of color,
and of gold, / a hub of rose sailing like a fleet / which scans the horizon for
a harbor's tenderness. / Beirut has died a thousand times and been reborn a
thousand times."
Beirut refuses to die. She, who stood strong against ravaging wars,
fought with love, bringing a
nation to an unconditional state of solidarity.
In this artwork abstraction, I paint the continuous symbiotic
process of love and birth of a crumbling city with a tortured past, brimming
with memories, that keeps inspiring me.
I went exploring a hectic,
crowded, and beautiful city whose true face is overlaid with nostalgia. I redrew
my visual memory of places I’ve been and streets I’ve walked, projecting
forward and backward at once in an effort to reimagine my city beyond the
atrocities of wars and political unrest.
The metaphor Beirut/mother plays a central role in my work, taking
the form of an interlaced abstraction of what is both real and symbolic in the
feminine body and urban patterns.
The lines are a walk down memory lane, traced in the form of umbilical
cords extended between the city and its land. They are the streets, the strolls,
the curves and scars.
Beirut’s dilapidated evolution is marked by an asymmetric interplay
of dissimilar street plans and block arrangements. All, in varying states and
patterns, stand side by side to form a progressive poetic rhythm.
My urban fabric enjoys a nonconventional format that is
borderless, typically freed from its frame, solid and resistant. It is a mere
reflection of a city that is always bursting to rebel and realign
boundaries.
