Integrated Iconography and Hybridity in Times of War

Kulturnest co-founder & CEO Dr. Pamela Chrabieh presented a talk at the London Arts-Based Research Centre Transnational Conference “Women Who Create: The Feminine and the Arts,” held at the University of Cambridge and online, on March 29, 2026.

In her presentation, she introduced “Integrated Iconography” as her artistic practice, grounded in a deeper understanding of hybridity; not as a stylistic choice, but as a condition of existence within a world that is layered, entangled, and increasingly fractured by war, extremism, and polarization.

Drawing on her experience as an artist and on the ongoing war in Lebanon and Southwestern Asia, she examined the impact of war not only on places and bodies, but also on artistic practices, particularly those of women working from the margins, and on the fragile cultural ecosystems struggling to endure under conditions of violence and erasure.

Referencing her work at Kulturnest, she highlighted how artists are compelled to pause, relocate, or create under extreme constraints, and how maintaining even minimal spaces for dialogue and creation becomes both challenging and essential.

While acknowledging the limits and ambiguities of hybridity, she argued that it may nonetheless serve as a fragile means of resisting fragmentation, sustaining relationality, and continuing to create - and to remain human- in contexts where violence imposes division and reduction.