This project focuses on the resourcefulness and creativity that emerge from Lebanon’s infrastructural collapse. It reveals how individuals and communities have devised their own solutions, from makeshift repairs to privatised services to alternative usage of pharmaceuticals , to cope with the absence or presence of government intervention and the surrealness of the daily life events.
Alternative Uses
Panadol Night Vending Machine
Reduce - Reuse - Recycle
Waste Management - Food Waste Management
Modern Ruins
Privatizing the Public
BMA will be a leader and a source of pride for our beloved country, Lebanon, in the international market specifically in the Middle East Region and North Africa.
Source: https://www.bmapaints.com/about-us.php
Presidential Chair
critique of leadership and the normalization of dysfunction in governance, challenging the acceptance of inadequacy in power.
2020 - Ongoing
The project envisions the water truck as an evolved version of the traditional water fountain. Unlike conventional fountains that lost their functionality with rapid urbanization, these trucks have adapted to fulfill an essential need. They serve as mobile fountains, moving through the city’s arteries; yet their existence often goes unnoticed, as they have blended seamlessly into the urban fabric.
This constant movement has redefined the way water is supplied, creating a unique, alternative geography. By replacing stagnant pipes with constant transit, these trucks have effectively turned the streets into rivers, where the lifeblood of the city now flows above ground rather than below it.
The Fountain challenges the normalization of these vehicles. It prompts a reconsideration of their significance, inviting observers to recognize these mobile fountains as a reflection of the city’s socio-political complexity, its geography, and its intricate geopolitics.
The Beginning: Printmaking
The Origins of «The Fountain»
This realization led to the creation of "Fountain 1", my first print for the series. What began as a singular response to a thematic call has since evolved into a deeper, ongoing exploration of the infrastructure, scarcity, and survival of the city.
Production and editioning of the prints was only possible with the support of Beirut Printmaking Studio and Fundació Miró Mallorca
fountain 1
mezzotint on copper printed on cotton paper
23.5 x 23.5 cm
2022
Zambateeti Fountain
Mezzotint on copper printed on cotton paper
Matrix size 9 x 12 cm
Paper size 27 x 27 cm
2023
Fountain 2
Mezzotint on copper printed on cotton paper
24 x 32 cm
2022
Aquatint and roullette on copper printed on cotton paper
3 matices app. 13 x28 cm each
Paper 78,5 x 53,5cm.
2023
Aquatint and roullette printed n cotton paper
2 matrices 20 x 20 cm & 10 x 15 cm aprox.
Paper 78 x 54 cm
2023
Mezzotint on copper printed on cotton paper
Matrix 49,5 x 24,5 cm
Paper 76 x 54 cm
2023
Aquatint and Etching on copper printed on
cotton paper
Matrix 10 x 13,5 cm
Paper 28 x 30 cm
2023
Monoprint
2024
Untitled
Aquatint and roullette on copper printed on cotton paper
Matrix 22 x 42 cm
Paper 54 x 78 cm
2023
Drypoint on tetra pack printed on cotton paper
11.5 x 22 cm
2022
Untitled
Aquatint and roullette on copper printed on cotton paper
Matrix 22 x 42 cm
Paper 54 x 78 cm
2023
The Golden Chicken wall ( fountain 7)
Commissioned for Wood Street Walls
Works On Paper:Travel Souvenirs
Travel Cards
The Fountain: An Urban Landscape
In The Fountain: An Urban Landscape, I isolate the fountain within an urban context, emphasizing its presence in the city. This work explores the complexity of an alternative water system that operates above ground, contrasting with conventional water infrastructures typically hidden below.
MORSURE #3 L’archipel, Brittany, France
2023
The Fountain: Landscape2023-ongoing
In The Fountain: Landscape, I collected a handful of painted canvases from the Sunday flea market in Beirut and disrupted their landscape by inserting water trucks. I challenges present day water scarcity across the country by foregrounding the signifier, which has become a substitute for real water infrastructure in Lebanon. Then i will make these paintings available for sale at that same market and for the same price as the ones i had originally bought, recirculating the tampered canvases into people's homes.
Working Title: The Fountain: Landscape
Mixed media (wooden panels, oil paintings, acrylic paintings, watercolor paintings, editioned print, metal frame, wooden frames, butter paper, masking tape, Screws)
250 cm x 250 cm
2023-present
Close Up Shots:
Painting Studies2023
Through these painting studies, I explore the water truck as a physical object, focusing on its massive scale and the profound sense of familiarity we have developed toward it. My interest lies in the "normalization" of these vehicles—how an object of such industrial magnitude has become a quiet, unquestioned fixture of our daily lives.
These studies serve as a precursor to a later work: Life size fountain.
Untitled
Acrylics on linen canvas
00 cm x 00cm
2023
NTG
Acrylics on linen canvas
00 cm x 00cm
2023
Acrylics on linen canvas
00 cm x 00cm
2023
Life Size Fountain 2023
Mural Installation for Black Sun, White Mountains at Skanes konstforenin
This installation was commissioned for Black Sun, White Mountains at Skanes konstforenin ,curated by George Chamoun 2023
Road Signs: 2023-ongoing
constitutes a conceptual extension of the project, manifesting as a series of painted interventions upon the standardized language of the street. This work seeks to formally integrate the "mobile fountain" into our collective visual semiotics, granting it a permanent place in the vocabulary of the city.
By physically reclaiming these signs from the urban environment and reintroducing them as altered artifacts, the project disrupts the institutional narrative of the landscape. It is an act of "re-naming" the geography of the street. These signs no longer merely direct traffic; they acknowledge a parallel, lived reality. In this intervention, the water truck is elevated from a neglected utility to a sacred icon of survival, forcing a dialogue between the "official" city that ignores it and the "actual" city that depends on its constant flow.
The Urban Fountain
2022
This intervention posits the Lebanese present as a hyper-realist prophecy. It marks the end of the "commons" and the birth of a new, liquid aristocracy. In this space, the gold-painted vessel is no longer a tool; it is a monument to scarcity, a sovereign symbol of power in an era where the elements themselves have been privatized.
The "fountain" is thus reborn as a shrine to the Anthropocene. It invites us to confront a future where the lifeblood of the city is no longer a right, but a relic of privilege.
Mixed material
3m diameter by 2.7m height
2022
This installation was commissioned for
“imagine that tommorrow” exhibition
curated by Marc Mouarkesh and Rabih
Kousa for the INBETWEEN festival by
British Council Lebanon.
I have always found the van to be a visually captivating space, but as I began sketching them in search of answers, my focus narrowed. I moved away from the vehicle as a whole and found myself fixated on the rearview mirror. Hanging there, I saw a physical manifestation of a life decorative ornaments and charms that served as a portrait of the driver’s character.
Lacking a father figure in my life, I realized I was searching those reflections for the person I was meant to be, trying to piece together an identity I was never given. I eventually understood that this interest was a bridge to a forgotten landscape: the memories of riding in my father’s van, watching him through the frame of that same mirror.
What began as an observation of urban transit transformed into an act of soul-searching. It makes me wonder about the invisible maps others carry within them. So, tell me Lawen wasel?
“Lawen wasel?” was initially planned for exhibition in 2020 at Galerie Rmeil 392 in Beirut, but the opening was disrupted few weeks before due to the Beirut port explosion. The project was later showcased at ArtLab Beirut, with the support of the British Council Lebanon.
This series is a meditation on the devaluation of a dream. It was born in the wake of the Lebanese uprising—a brief, rare moment where the city felt accessible and the bird emerged in my work as a motif of reclaimed freedom.
As the uprising faltered, the bird’s nature shifted from liberty to exodus. By layering this symbol over the banknotes of potential futures, the work explores the tension between the soaring spirit of a revolution and the heavy, metallic reality of inflation.
In this series, the bird no longer represents the sky above the city, but the currency of departure. It is a study of the "weight" of moving where the value of a home is traded for the cost of a flight, and the freedom of the streets is replaced by the search for a new, welcoming geography.