A new exhibition at Beit Beirut is bringing together family archives, personal testimony and recreated domestic spaces to preserve memories of southern Lebanon at a time of continuing displacement and destruction.
Hkeeli Ya Jnoub, meaning Tell Me, O South, features photographs, letters, videos and interactive installations exploring everyday life, conflict and the enduring bond between people and their land.
More than 3,500 people have visited the exhibition, organisers say, with visitors contributing more than 100 letters, 50 drawings and hundreds of written memories.
The exhibition occupies parts of Beit Beirut, the former Barakat building that still bears the scars of Lebanon’s civil war. On its upper floor, rooms have been transformed into a traditional southern Lebanese home, complete with a bedroom, kitchen, living room and study.
Coffee pots, glass jugs, spice containers and family photographs create a portrait of domestic life in a region more often represented through war and occupation than anything else.
Filmmaker and researcher Adeeb Farhat, one of the exhibition’s curators, says the project was shaped by the urgency of preserving stories that risk being lost.
His installation Keys Without Homes features keys kept by residents whose homes in south Lebanon were destroyed or made inaccessible. Suspended from the ceiling, they represent the hope of return and the absence of the doors they once opened.
Fatima Hajj Ali, whose home in Nabatieh Al Fawqa was badly damaged, became emotional while visiting the installation.
“We were supposed to go home and open the door with the key, but there is no door any more,” the 23-year-old told AFP.
Other works draw on family records and inherited memories. In Manufacturing Estrangements, artist Rawan Mazeh examines letters exchanged between Hassan Saeed and Abda Malkani, a married couple detained in Khiam prison during Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon.
The letters describe separation, imprisonment and torture, while also asking about olive trees, gardens and relatives back home.
What Remains, by Sama Beydoun, uses photographs of her grandfather’s destroyed house in Bint Jbeil. A technical problem left many of the images blurred, an effect Beydoun says made them resemble memories from a dream.
An augmented-reality map brings villages into view through photographs and personal archives. Images sent by families are pinned to a map of southern Lebanon, while notebooks invite visitors to record their own experiences.
The exhibition also extends into public programming celebrating southern traditions, including a saj bread-making workshop led by Sitt Salma.
Organisers say Hkeeli Ya Jnoub is not intended to represent every experience of the south. Instead, it creates a growing archive shaped by those who lived there, preserving details of homes, traditions and relationships that conflict might otherwise erase.
