“I was born and raised in the 1970s-1980s war in Lebanon which has definitely marked my identity, world vision, and visual expression, and has fueled my pursuit for connections between cultures and religions; the contemporary and traditional; the physical and digital; the logos (“word”), and the eikon (Gr. εἰκών/εἰκόνα, “image”, “likeness”, “representation”, or “depiction”). My art journey started in my childhood, in shelters, drawing with rudimentary tools and singing with other children so that our voices cover the horrific sounds of the bombing.

The 1990s opened the doors to momentary ceasefires [definitely not what was portrayed by so-called ‘experts’ as the post-war era] and to my own quest for healing the wounds of memory and connecting people beyond borders of hate and ignorance through the arts and culture. Traditional iconography and restoration of icons were the first milestones in my quest, followed by Kufic calligraphy, and reconstructions of my visual style, themes (such as women’s rights and empowerment, intercultural and interreligious dialogue, war memory and peacebuilding, migration, …), colors, and medium. I was no longer using egg tempera but experimenting with mixed media, then digital arts, while connecting traditional byzantine and Syriac ‘writing’ of iconographic faces — using stylized forms, specific light, and shading effects linked to the possibility of human divinization (theosis), and inverse perspective — with contemporary visualizations of the margins, the invisible/visible channeling, “what is already and not yet”, and the socio-political function of arts towards inclusive societies.

My art is a multiform expression of my experiences at the crossroads of identities and follows my glocal (local/global) footprints and dialogic connections in Canada, Europe, and Southwestern Asia.

Each artwork’s role is either to “make present” here and now the “invisible” gazes or to express pieces of wounded memories and interpenetrating cultural narratives, and more, to sublimate reality without making it appear ontologically superior or ‘hyper real’, but simply different”. ‘Beyond Silence XVI’ brings together the scattered elements of Southwestern Asian women, gives voice to the often forgotten struggles for freedom and equality, and portrays the experience of women in contexts of wars and crises without relegating them to static pages of history where we only remember their status as victims.