About the Galleries

Le Port de Beyrouth: The Place

This section deconstructs concepts of belonging in relation to a place that is constantly changing to meet the many expectations projected onto it. The artistic perspectives featured in this section reveal the partial and exclusionary natures of the numerous characterisations of Beirut. Works by Khalil Zgaib, Etel Adnan, Huguette Caland, Rafic Charaf, Paul Guiragossian, and Farid Aouad highlight the disparities between those who benefited from Beirut’s prosperity and those who watched as onlookers from within, forever anticipating the fulfilment of its promise.

The Body

This section examines how changing social values in Beirut and across the world in the 1960s influenced and inspired new artistic tendencies. This section includes works by Huguette Caland, Helen El-Khal, Cici Surosock, Juliana Seraphim, Dorothy Salhab Kazemi, Georges Doche, Paul Guiragossian, and many others.

Takween (Composition): The Form

This section, featuring works by Saloua Raouda Choucair, Laure Ghorayeb, Rafic Charaf, Dia Al Azzawi, Mehdi Moutashar, John Hadidian, Etel Adnan, Shafic Abboud, and Hashem Samarchi, examines how decisions by artists in the Beirut scene to subscribe to certain formal styles or movements were far more than simple expressions of taste and aesthetics. For many artists, the visual expression of their works was a clear reflection of their identification with a geopolitical cultural lineage that could exist outside of and in confrontation with the forms that were inherited and appropriated through colonial legacies. For others, the pursuit of formal considerations was an illustration of the ease with which they could navigate a variety of styles and media free from the burden of identity politics. Artists utilising a wide range of techniques, materials and styles converged in Beirut’s 1960s art scene and their diverse interests influenced an emerging cultural landscape. Concurrently, a growing network of patrons and exhibition spaces supported these increasingly experimental and innovative directions. This section considers the local articulations of various modernist tendencies in Beirut, paying close attention to the predominance of abstraction from the 1950s to 1970s.

Monster and Child: The Politics

In this section, the exhibition traces the rapid escalation of political and social tensions from the late 1960s until the outbreak of the war in 1975. In 1972, students at the Lebanese University staged protests against university leadership and the government, which were violently quelled by government forces. In the same year, workers from the Gandour chocolate factory organised strikes. Coca-Cola factories, as symbols of Western imperialism, bred increasing local resentment. Sporadic armed clashes broke out on Lebanon’s southern border, particularly after the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) re-established its headquarters in Beirut following its defeat in Jordan in 1970. Regional crises, such as the Fourth Arab-Israeli War in 1973 and the resulting Saudi-led oil embargo of Israeli allies, also contributed to the worsening political situation in Beirut. Through works by Paul Guiragossian, Aref El Rayess, Jumana El-Husseini, and Mona Saudi, this section takes a close look at the relationship between art and politics in the years preceding the start of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, when the systemic problem of sectarianism in social and political institutions destabilised all aspects of life in the city.

Blood of the Phoenix: The War

This final section of the exhibition reveals how the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) took its toll on the Beirut art scene. Galleries and independent art spaces were shuttered, and artists migrated to Europe, the United States and the Arab Gulf states. Some politically active artists who remained in Beirut joined the short-lived Lebanese National Movement (LNM) – a coalition of various left-leaning political parties and independent groups who fought the Christian nationalist militias and sought to reform the Lebanese state. Artists also created posters for the sectarian parties they supported.

By the late 1970s, it became obvious that no liberationist path of resistance remained. The escalating violence led to a mass exodus of Muslims and Christians, who fled to areas under the control of their own sects. As a result, the two Beiruts of the civil war – one a predominantly Muslim East, the other a Christian West – were formed. Like all other aspects of Lebanese society, this development had an impact on the artist community as well. With a sniper-surveilled demarcation line of roadblocks and labyrinthine barricades segregating the two sides of the city, most of the galleries and cultural spaces that had catered to the city’s intellectual and artistic communities for so long faced imminent closure or drastically scaled back their programmes due to the inability of both artists and the public to navigate their city freely. Works by Nicolas Moufarrege, Simone Baltaxe Martayan, Aref El Rayess, and Jamil Molaeb highlight the enduring impact of the war on cultural production in Beirut.