An Article by D. M. (494 words, 3 min. read)
Ghada Zoghbi paints with inquiry at the heart of her practice. Her works whisper questions, about memory, belonging, and what lingers in the spaces we leave behind. In her fourth solo exhibition Between Dust and Dawn (Galerie Janine Rubeiz, September 10 – October 10, 2025), she confronts us with landscapes that breathe like wounds. They are not only places but states of being, where dust, stone, and sky carry the metaphysical weight of memory.
From Stones to Dust
In her previous exhibition, Wild Mindscapes (2024), Zoghbi drew upon the permanence of ancient stones and the intimacy of human interaction with earth. Now, she turns to fragility. The stones of yesterday have been ground into dust and mud, their solidity undone. What emerges is a vision at once intimate and vast, panoramic views interrupted by sudden plunges, scars etched into Lebanese valleys, traces of what was left behind. These works ask: what happens to memory when the land itself shifts beneath it?
Technique as Poetry
Zoghbi’s art is not only about what is seen, but how it is made. Her delicate drawings are layered with acrylic, diluted with water until the pigments dissolve into fragile transparencies. This lightness is anchored by her marouflage technique, where paper drawings are mounted onto canvas. The process itself mirrors her themes: permanence meeting fragility, grounding the ephemeral in something that can endure. Charcoal marks ignite glowing passages of color—warm oranges, blues, and greens—creating a rhythm between silence and intensity.
Silence and Aftermath
What strikes in this exhibition is the quiet power of restraint, where subtlety carries more weight than spectacle. Many of the works lean toward monochrome, their muted tones carrying the quiet heaviness of aftermath. They are almost “quasi-abstract mineral landscapes,” as though the earth itself were pausing to remember. In Zoghbi’s own words: “One frame can hold it still, an image. Released, it dissolves, a memory.” The works stand as silent witnesses, holding traces of both yesterday’s destruction and today’s fragile regeneration.
Beyond Borders
Born in Shmestar in 1980, Ghada Zoghbi has long resisted boundaries, whether geographic, political, or artistic. From her early works that told the intimate stories of community members through their closets (Regimes of the Personal, 2016) to her acclaimed explorations of abandoned spaces (Pretty Abandoned, 2021), she has persistently asked what binds the personal to the collective. She has carried this questioning into classrooms, enriching children’s lives with art for over two decades before fully dedicating herself to her own practice.
A Gaze Between Dust and Dawn
Between Dust and Dawn is not a story of despair, nor of hope. It exists in the in-between, where silence and memory drift. These works refuse to move forward or return; instead, they suspend us in the fragile present. In that suspension, Zoghbi offers what she always has: a vision of life seen through questions, rendered with delicacy, and carried with a rare sensitivity that turns traces of the past into living art..
