Notes from Lebanon’s Cultural Ground
Since the beginning of this month, something has shifted in Lebanon's arts and culture sector, not in a spectacular or immediately visible way, but in a quieter, more structural manner. A slowing. A density. What many of us have begun to call, almost instinctively, joumoud. Not simply paralysis, but a kind of internal hardening. A point at which movement becomes difficult, physically, mentally, emotionally, imaginatively...
This is not the first crisis the sector has faced. Over the past years, artists and cultural practitioners have worked through economic collapse, institutional fragility, the aftermath of the Beirut port explosion, currency devaluation, a progressive erosion of infrastructures, and war. Many adapted. Some left. Others reconfigured their practices, downsized, digitised, collaborated across borders, or found ways to continue with less. There was, even in difficulty, a form of elasticity.
What is different now is the loss of that elasticity, and it is abrupt.
For many artists, this is the first time the experience is not one of pressure but of suspension. Not crisis-as-stimulation, but crisis-as-stoppage. The sense that the ground is no longer unstable but immobile. That nothing can be projected forward. That time itself has thickened.
This is not uniform, and it would be inaccurate to present a single narrative. Some artists continue to produce, sometimes intensely, even compulsively. For some, creation has become a way to prevent collapse, a way to maintain a minimum of coherence in the face of overwhelming fragmentation. They write, sketch, compose, document, not because clarity has been reached, but precisely because it has not. Creation becomes less about outcome and more about containment.
Others, however, have reached a threshold where production is no longer possible. Not out of lack of will, but because the conditions for transformation - meaning attention, distance, and internal space - are no longer available. This, too, needs to be acknowledged without judgment. The inability to create, in such contexts, is not failure. It is an index of saturation.
At the level of the sector, the impact is tangible. Small and medium cultural enterprises -independent spaces, galleries, design platforms, residencies, collectives - are operating under increasingly fragile conditions. Unlike larger institutions, which may have reserves, international backing, or structural buffers, these entities function with minimal margins. Their sustainability depends on continuity: of visitors, of sales, of programming, of circulation. That continuity is now deeply compromised.
Local audiences, facing severe economic constraints, no longer have the capacity to engage with art as they once did, not only in terms of acquisition but even in terms of presence. Attendance fluctuates. Exhibitions and events have been canceled or postponed. Purchasing power has diminished significantly. Cultural participation, for many, has become secondary to immediate concerns. At the same time, many artists, creative enterprises, and cultural NGOs have redirected their efforts toward urgent social support, such as working with displaced communities in schools and local neighbourhoods, offering time, resources, and presence in ways that extend beyond their usual artistic roles. Their work has been essential and quietly remarkable.
At the same time, the external networks on which the sector has come to rely, particularly from the Gulf region and the diaspora, are themselves affected. Travel is disrupted. Uncertainty delays decisions. Attention shifts elsewhere. The fragile ecosystem that connected local production to external support is no longer functioning with the same reliability.
The result is not yet a collapse in the dramatic sense, but a general contraction of activity that risks becoming structural if prolonged.
At Kulturnest, we have chosen, for now, to remain open. Not in the sense of maintaining normal operations, but in the sense of holding a space. Each morning from Wednesday to Saturday, informal gatherings take place with artists, visitors, and friends around coffee. There is no programme. No agenda. Conversations unfold as they can. People speak about what they are living, about what they can no longer do, about what has shifted in their work, about fear, fatigue, disorientation, and occasionally, about the small fragments that still hold.
These are not solutions. They do not resolve the structural challenges the sector is facing. But they create a minimal form of continuity, of presence, of exchange, of articulation.
Alongside this, we continue the artist residency programme. We continue to support artists who exhibit with us, physically and online. We continue to maintain visibility for works that might otherwise disappear from circulation. But the question of sustainability is no longer theoretical. It is immediate.
How long can such efforts be maintained when the economic base that supports them is eroding? When both local engagement and external support are under strain? When the sector is asked, once again, to endure without the conditions necessary for endurance?
There is no clear answer.
What can be said, however, is that war not only affects artists at the level of logistics or economy. It enters the work itself. It alters rhythm, scale, and form. It affects what can be held, what can be expressed, and what remains unsayable. It shifts the relationship between experience and representation. In some cases, it produces fragmentation. In others, silence. In others, a rawness that resists formal resolution. These are not stylistic shifts. They are structural.
To speak today about the arts and culture sector in Lebanon is therefore to speak about programming, funding, or institutional survival, yes. But it is also necessary to speak about the conditions under which meaning can still be produced, shared, and sustained. At present, those conditions are under severe pressure.
And yet, within that pressure, something persists, not as resilience in the romantic sense, but as a series of small, deliberate acts. Whether this persistence can be sustained remains uncertain. But it is, for now, what exists...
