Embodied Realities: 23 Artists, One Collective Awakening at Kulturnest
From April 12 to June 12, 2025, Kulturnest in Sin-el-Fil transforms into a vibrant meeting point of bodies, stories, and sensations through its groundbreaking exhibition, Embodied Realities. This isn’t your typical art show; it’s a deep, soulful dive into what it means to live in a body today. In a region that’s constantly navigating fragility, conflict, beauty, and resilience, this exhibition pulses with life, presence, and raw honesty.
23 artists from Lebanon, the region, and beyond come together to explore the body through 78 artworks as archive, protest, dream, celebration, and sacred space. The result? A rich, hybrid constellation of movement, memory, silence, color, and spirit.
Movement, Memory, and the Surface of the Skin
Start with Olga Safa’s tango-inspired works, where movement is both intimate and grand. “Over the Milonga” and “The Tangueros” blend desire with discipline, floating between Chagall’s whimsy and Lempicka’s sharpness.
Datevig Berberian invites stillness into the room with "Celebrate the Moment", her poised ballerina dancing not for applause but for survival.
Joseph Ghobeira’s earthy artworks in "Des racines et des ailes" show hybrid beings—part tree, part bird, all longing.
George Khoury brings anatomical precision and emotional complexity, dissecting and reconstructing the human form with echoes of Beirut’s architectural scars. His Armstrong pieces question the very limits of endurance in unfamiliar, tech-infused terrains.
And Leslie Akl? Her piece "Life" practically screams and whispers at once, a stretched, black-red figure that bleeds, resists, and defies containment. It’s a visual punch of power, pain, and transformation.
Dreams, Myths, and the Otherworldly
Some artists pull us away from the surface and into the surreal. Amira Daaboul’s Mushroom Wonders are fantastical hybrids - half-human, half-fungi - reminding us we are rooted in nature’s wild design.
Nora Lebbos’ watercolor figures, in works like "All is a Dream", melt into the background, blurring the lines between flesh, thought, and spirit.
And Grégory Taousson takes us into digital futures (but also presents) with "Manifesto of the Alien Body", where embodiment becomes a question of code, connection, and beyond.
Hazar Daou’s emotional palette dances between rage and softness. "Red Zone pulses" with urgency; "The Joker" unveils hidden performance; and "Breathe" brings us back to the quiet power of simply being.
Maria Azar’s black-and-white tree drawings ground us in stillness and memory. Her linework is meditative, ancestral, and deeply alive.
Meanwhile, Rabih Yehya fuses Arabic calligraphy with Van Gogh’s iconic night sky in "The Starry Night Bil Khat Al Arabi", animating heritage through augmented reality.
The Body as Protest, Prayer, and Celebration
Many of the works in Embodied Realities speak directly to resistance and joy, sometimes in the same breath.
Precilia N. Hawa’s "Silent Grief" captures sacred mourning in a cracked, embracing figure.
Jeanne d’Arc Bou Younes reclaims masculinity in "Take Off Your Shoes, You Are on Holy Ground", where vulnerability becomes scripture.
Marie Bassil’s "Flower Power" bursts with rebellious color, channeling ‘60s spirit into visual anthems.
Rosalie Karadeulian’s "The Radiant Muse" brings us back to the dancefloor - her digital figures shimmer with life and sound.
Théreza E. Zgheib offers profound emotional weight in "Dementia", "Mother of All", and "Pomegranate", where motherhood, memory, and trauma swirl in layered silhouettes.
Stitching Stories, Rewriting Narratives
Rima Ghanem reclaims the needle as a radical tool. In "Unfinished – Ode to Keith Haring", she traces motion rather than endings. In "The Holy and the Profane", she questions the binary labels society stamps on women’s bodies.
Tala Beydoun also sews quiet resistance into her threadwork. "Beirut mon Amour" speaks of loss and longing stitched onto urban grief, while "At the Mall" captures subtle identity performances in the city’s daily theater.
Ovsanna Yepremian Telfeyan’s works - "Hope", "Floral Bride", and "Revolution" - chart a journey of transformation. Her forms rise, fade, and return, always in movement.
On the Edge of Perception
Finally, we reach the blurry spaces where the body becomes metaphor, question, or mirage.
Sarah Kouzi’s "Guardians in Tutu" turn industrial cranes into ballerinas - a surreal and tender metaphor for Beirut’s strange beauty and broken grace.
Nayla Kilzi’s "Populated" explores coexistence, fragmentation, and reconciliation through overlapping forms and stories.
Elio Sadeck translates pressure into physical form. His works - "Echoes of Stress", "The Pillar", and "Stuck in Canvas" - are born from choreography, capturing bodies mid-struggle, suspended in invisible tension.
Why This Exhibition Matters
Embodied Realities isn’t just a show, it’s a collective act of remembering. Of resisting. Of breathing. In a Lebanon still reeling from collapse and in a Levant marked by displacement and endurance, these works return us to something essential: the body as home. The body as the first site of truth.
Through color, line, movement, and silence, these 23 artists remind us that embodiment is more than existence; it’s meaning, story, and presence in a world that often asks us to vanish.
And at Kulturnest, this is just the beginning...
Dr. Pamela Chrabieh, Embodied Realities Curator & Kulturnest Co-founder & CEO.
