Nabil Nahas has spent more than five decades redefining the boundaries of abstraction. As the Lebanese-American artist prepares to represent Lebanon at the Venice Art Biennale this year, his work for the national pavilion feels like a culmination of the many artistic chapters of his career.
Titled Don’t Get Me Wrong, and curated by Nada Ghandour, Nahas’s vision for the Lebanese Pavilion will unfold as an immersive space in Venice's Arsenale shipyard, exploring the relationship between humanity, nature and the cosmos.
The pavilion is an ode to Lebanon’s fluid, multicultural essence, celebrating unity within diversity. It captures the beauty of contradictions – a central theme in Nahas’s decades-long artistic journey between Lebanon and the US, where he is based.
Spanning 45 linear metres within the Arsenale, the installation consists of 26 acrylic-on-canvas panels, with scenography by East Architecture Studio. The monumental paintings will be arranged side by side, creating an enveloping frieze that invites visitors to move through the space. The format echoes the narrative ribbons of paintings and carvings found in Greco-Roman architecture, such as the temples of Baalbek and the Parthenon.
“This work is a combination of art, culture and spirituality; at the same time, it is symbolic and philosophical. You can see the influence of Islamic art, occidental abstraction, and themes and symbols that come from the Bible,” Ghandour tells The National. “The work represents all the layered civilisations we have here in Lebanon throughout history, which are embedded in our identity.
“Unlike regular friezes, Nabil’s work doesn’t tell a linear story. Each painting is different, but also somehow connected,” she adds. “The paintings contain different meanings, subjects and interpretations alongside each other, resulting in multiple readings for the audience.”
Inspired by the format of Persian miniatures – where the story is woven through layered sections and curving pathways – the installation resists linear narrative and fixed interpretation. Instead, it offers an experience in which the paintings can be read through various groupings and perceived connections.
The compositions feature different forms of geometric abstraction inspired by traditions from Islam and the West, as well as fractal patterns. Some panels depict figurative landscapes and natural elements, while others follow the geometry of star shapes, both natural and man-made.
“The paintings will be raised two metres off the ground – higher than a door – so people will look upwards at them,” Nahas tells The National from his home and studio in the village of Ain Aar. “It also means people won’t block a third of the work by standing in front of it. It’s a very Renaissance-era way of displaying art, like in churches or palaces.
“The inspiration for my work is ultimately nature – from a fossil to a flower in my garden – and looking closely at humanity’s relationship with nature,” he adds. “As a teenager, I used to play with my friend in the ruins of Byblos on Saturdays. A veritable millefeuille of Neolithic, Amorite, Hyksos, Phoenician, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Mamluk and Ottoman civilisations; the cliff revealed, through winter erosion, these different strata and offered us countless amulets and small objects that I still keep.”
While geometry has long been central to Nahas’s work, his fascination with nature developed more gradually. Many of his paintings feature trees native to Lebanon – cedar, olive, palm – while others incorporate dozens of moulded casts of starfish. Both motifs are tied to personal experiences and pivotal memories in Nahas’s life, which now recur in his paintings.
“In the 1980s, one morning while walking on the beach [in Long Island], I watched the waves wash across the sand and retreat, carving shapes and small holes,” he explains. “I immediately saw a connection with the constellations in the sky – my first instinctive approach to the relationship between the terrestrial and the celestial, between the macrocosm and the microcosm.
“Then in 1991, there was a terrible hurricane. My house in the Hamptons was close to the beach, so I took a walk on the shore afterwards, and the whole beach was studded with starfish,” he adds. “I collected a few to incorporate into my work. At first I made monochrome paintings. Then I began working the surfaces, adding material to reveal recurring shapes. I emphasised these forms and gradually, from one work to the next, these consistencies gave rise to what I call fractals.
“The patterns interlock and tessellate, much like the structures of certain crystals and organic forms – honeycombs, for example.”
Nahas returned to Lebanon in 1993 for a family visit after being away for 18 years. It was then that he rediscovered the country’s lush landscapes and natural beauty, becoming particularly enamoured with cedar and olive trees. Not considering himself a landscape painter, he initially dismissed the idea of depicting them. But in 2006, he began creating figurative images of the trees from his studio in New York, at a time when Lebanon was under bombardment by Israel.
Though not directly expressed by the artist, both moments relate to natural or man-made disasters reshaping the natural world – a theme that resonates in today’s crisis-ridden era, especially as Lebanon once again finds itself under attack.
Paintings featuring spirals nod to the cyclical patterns found in Sufi belief, while the multiplication of certain shapes reflects a spirituality in which small elements form part of a larger whole. The pavilion may initially appear to be a jumbled combination of unrelated images, but the longer viewers remain immersed in the space, the more connections and poignant juxtapositions emerge, reflecting the many facets – and fractals – of Lebanon.
Venice Art Biennale runs from May 9 to November 22
