For decades, Lebanon has been a byword for “resilience”, enduring repeated conflicts and crises. Yet, even in the current moment of relative calm – marked by the recent visit from Pope Leo XIV – bombs continue to fall, while the country remains trapped in political paralysis and economic collapse.
For many Lebanese, these conditions have become an immutable fact of life – an avoidant response shaped by generations of violence and injustice.
A new exhibition by AD Leb, hosted at Beit Beirut, pushes back against this culture of silence. Titled Freedom Recalled, it brings together works by 36 artists who confront the emotional and psychological scars of Lebanon’s past and present, addressing events from the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War to today.
“Since 1975, we have been in a continuous state of chaos,” AD Leb founder and director Annie Vartivarian tells The National.
“Nothing is ever resolved in this country. The same catastrophes are repeated again and again, and people want to forget. There is no justice. There is just trauma. But if we take this opportunity to remember, to resist what is happening and come together, perhaps we can begin to solve these problems.”
Vartivarian’s connection to the exhibition is deeply personal. “I lost my daughter in the Beirut Port explosion. I lost a young cousin when I was 19. I lost most of my family when they left the country,” she says. “As Lebanese, we talk about resilience and moving on – but there is resilience, and then there is amnesia. This exhibition was born not from nostalgia, but from an urgent need to confront a past that has never been allowed to conclude.”
The choice of Beit Beirut as the exhibition’s venue is deliberate. Built in 1924 as an apartment building, it was later occupied by militants during the civil war and transformed into a sniper’s nest overlooking the Green Line that once divided East and West Beirut. Today, repurposed as a museum and cultural centre, the building still bears the physical scars of conflict, its bullet-marked walls left exposed.
The scenography of Freedom Recalled responds directly to this history, recontextualising a site of violence as a space for reflection and healing. In doing so, it mirrors the exhibition’s wider mission – to address trauma openly and honestly, rather than perpetuating Lebanon’s cycles of avoidance and impunity.
“We wanted to rewrite the story of the Green Line as a symbol of reconciliation and rebirth, through plants and trees,” says Yasmina Wakim, co-founder of NGO For the Art and the exhibition’s scenographer. “The exhibition is a journey through Lebanon’s polarities and dualities. Each artist tells a story connected to one of these themes. And at the end of that journey, we offer art therapy sessions, facilitated by For the Art.”
“When trauma is buried, you can’t talk about it – and if you can’t talk about it, you can’t heal,” she adds. “It passes from generation to generation in a cycle of injustice and impunity. Mental health remains deeply taboo in Lebanon, so the idea here is to create space for these voices to be heard and to begin breaking that cycle.”
Among the participating artists is multidisciplinary practitioner Christine Safatly, who presents several works, including two drawings from her X-Ray Scanner series. Rendered in stark black-and-white pencil and pastel, the pieces combine human anatomy with jagged abstract forms, evoking both the physicality of unprocessed trauma and its lack of clear definition.
“Everything you feel is processed through your body,” Safatly says. “That’s what I’m trying to explore visually. I chose the spine because it’s the base of the human body, and I’m using scratching and mark-making to show how memory and trauma operate unconsciously. It’s an emotional injury – something that can be triggered. When I stretch, it’s visceral. I feel it as I do it, and I want the viewer to feel it too.”
Elsewhere, cultural and visual anthropologist Sabah Haider presents a multimodal installation titled Three Stages of Grief, which foregrounds collective action in moments of rupture. One component, Another Wall That Shouldn’t Exist, features 108 personal text messages Haider received in the aftermath of the Beirut Port explosion, each asking her to bring medicines to Lebanon amid severe drug shortages. The messages are reproduced as anonymous handwritten notes, affixed to a purpose-built wall.
The work is accompanied by The Crying Table, an interactive piece that invites strangers to share their experiences, and Dear Diaspora, a series of postcards that use dark Lebanese humour to satirise the country’s recent crises. Displayed on a neon-lit board, the postcards are offered to visitors as gifts, extending the exhibition’s reach beyond Beirut.
“People engaging with the project while I was building it were always crying,” Haider says. “My intention was to keep it light, while showing that pain is shared and trauma is collective. It’s overwhelming to revisit something so recent – there’s anger, grief and also love. My goal is to take these messages to major cities across the diaspora and create spaces for dialogue.”
Another notable contribution comes from Maya Hmeidan and Assaad Seif of NGO Silat for Culture. Their work, Between Memory & Erasure… a Rightful Debate, centres on the ruined Beirut Port grain silos, which shielded much of West Beirut from the blast. The first element is a photograph taken by Hmeidan during a Unesco inspection, in which a lion-like form – dubbed the “Guardian of the Silos” – appears in the play of light and shadow across the rubble, echoing the structure’s protective role.
The second element stages a written debate between two voices – Memory and Erasure. One argues for preserving the silos themselves as a memorial; the other advocates for replacing them with a new monument.
“When the Ministry of Culture classified the silos as a monument, we began discussing what that should mean,” Seif says. “Within the heritage community, we argued that people need a physical element to help them remember. But others felt something new and soothing should be built instead. That tension became the work.”
“More and more, we’re realising that heritage is a social construct,” he adds. “What the community decides has value becomes heritage. In January, we’ll gather public responses and reopen the debate – because disagreement, in this case, is healthy, and the decision should belong to the people.”
Freedom Recalled runs until January 11 at Beit Beirut
