Destruction, be it physical or cognitive has been highly normalized in Lebanon. Over the past 40 years it got endoctrinated in our minds as part of everyday lives.
How do artists witness, transform and transcribe the experience of destruction in their work?
Each week, one artist will take over this Instagram account to share, highlight, question and reflect on the notion of destruction.

Chafa Ghaddar presents a poetic performance made of images, texts, voice recordings and videos. You can check her intervention in the highlights section.

In "Blue: more than a colour . . " Chafa Ghaddar and Jill Magi move the traditional artist talk into another space: something between a slide show, a poetry reading, a text, and an exhibition in itself. The performance shuffles images and texts from both artists' archives, notebooks, and studios. Blue emerges as its own character, presence as two voices make a third space of shared thinking, making, and being.

Chafa Ghaddar and writer Kevin Jones discuss the Ghaddar’s art practice, exploring the ideas that shaped the exhibition, their ongoing conversation through a journey of mentorship and the new possibilities and ideas that have emerged through Critical Practice Programme.

Tashkeel’s Autumn 2020 season programme begins on 22 September with a solo exhibition by Chafa Ghaddar entitled ‘Recesses’. The exhibition shines a new light on the ancient mural-making technique of fresco by challenging the “wall” and the idea of completion.
‘Recesses’, which runs until 26 November, is a body of work resulting from a year of research and experimentation, which combines paper, painting, fresco and other media as a territory of skin, offering viewers an intimate and challenging experience of touch, colour, texture and material.
Ghaddar’s problematisation of the fresco technique in her work is informed by extensive research in this historical technique that she started studying in 2012 while in Florence, Italy. It was created with mentorship from arts writer Kevin Jones, and artist, critic and educator Jill Magi.

Wrapping up season 1 of Tavan Studio in Conversation with an in-depth chat about frescoes, surfaces, decay, and time with artist and muralist @chafaghaddar . Chafa walks us through her journey of observing the natural and also distressed landscapes of Lebanon and the transition to the heat and crystal blue pool surfaces of Dubai and how that has impacted her fresco thought process and work. Chafa also opens up about her experience as a new mother and gives us a very honest and raw depiction of her time spent during the lockdown.

In August 2015 I attended a camp in al Qusair, Egypt, organized by ADEF, the Arab Digital Expression Foundation. In an open and constructive environment, workshops were developed to create experiences that enhance creative self-expression, self-exploration and critical thinking for youth.
As a participant, I developed a site-specific workshop where people were invited to interfere on stones picked from the site, explore different types of intervention and reflect on the notion of trace.
In an attempt to question durability, stability and ephemerality, these stones where left on site embracing other natural stones already existing in the field.