An Article by D. M. (760 words, 4 min. read)
At Galerie Tanit Beirut, from September 10 to October 25, the Iraqi artist Adel Abidin presents What Remains, a deeply resonant exhibition that transforms personal and collective memory into layered visions of survival. In these new works, Abidin returns to painting after years of working in installation and video, allowing the medium itself to carry the traces of trauma, displacement, and renewal. Each canvas reveals a landscape that is at once wounded and luminous, constructed through soft pastel tones, shifting horizon lines, and fluid gestures that speak of persistence amid destruction.
The artist’s brush is not only a tool of representation but also of remembrance. His paintings are fields where past and present converge, where fractured histories breathe again through texture and color. The lightness of his palette contrasts with the gravity of his themes, creating works that invite viewers to linger between pain and beauty, erasure and endurance.
The Horizon as Memory and Threshold
Across the exhibition, the horizon emerges as a guiding motif. Sometimes it is a sharp line dividing earth and sky, elsewhere it dissolves into ambiguity, as if blurred by time or memory. This mutable horizon becomes a metaphor for dislocation, a reminder of how people uprooted by war, violence, or migration live between departure and return, loss and belonging.
Dr. Tamara Chalabi, curator of the exhibition, captures this poignantly: “Each painting offers its own meditation on displacement, united by the horizon’s role as both geographical marker and psychological opening.” Her words echo through the works, where horizons fracture, bend, or stretch infinitely, mapping the fragile balance between disappearance and survival.
Echoes of Iraq, Visions for the World
Although these landscapes and seascapes evoke universal sites of destruction, they remain intimately connected to Abidin’s formative years in Baghdad. The quality of light, the interplay of land and water, the textures of ruin, each element carries a memory of Iraq, transformed through the artist’s vision into a universal language. What could be a shoreline in Beirut, a desert in Syria, or a cityscape in ruins becomes an emblem of shared human experience, transcending geography while never abandoning its roots.
Abidin’s works remind us that trauma does not erase place; it reshapes it. His brushstrokes suggest that memory, though fragile, can survive catastrophe, offering pathways to renewal.
Sculptures in Dialogue with Paintings
Complementing the canvases are delicate sculptures installed within the gallery space. These three-dimensional works reflect the organic lines and muted tones of the paintings, extending the landscapes into the viewer’s path. Thin metal and shaped forms rise and twist like fragments of memory made tangible, balancing fragility and resilience. They are not simply objects in space but continuations of the painted narratives, allowing visitors to step into the atmosphere that Abidin creates. An atmosphere of loss transformed into presence.
The Artist’s Journey
Adel Abidin, born in Baghdad in 1973 and now based in Helsinki, has long explored questions of identity, conflict, and cultural alienation. Known for his sharp, ironic perspective and his ability to blend humor with critical reflection, he has exhibited globally, from Paris to Tokyo, Doha to Sydney. His return to painting at this moment feels both timely and urgent, as if the medium’s layers of pigment and light were the most fitting way to address a world marked by displacement and uncertainty.
Abidin’s artistic career reflects an ongoing dialogue between cultures, shaped by his own experience of exile and belonging. His works, now part of important collections worldwide, continue to resonate because they do not only tell his story, they tell ours.
A Curatorial Vision of Continuity
Dr. Tamara Chalabi, an Iraqi-Lebanese cultural leader and curator, brings her profound understanding of Middle Eastern art and history to this exhibition. Her curatorial approach emphasizes continuity: the way ruins preserve memory, the way horizons hold space for the future. Through her lens, What Remains becomes not only an exhibition but also a testimony to the persistence of culture amid upheaval.
What Persists
What Remains asks a simple yet urgent question: what survives when the familiar falls away? In Abidin’s vision, memory does not only record loss, it also sustains life. His paintings, luminous with pastels and layered with traces of history, invite viewers to consider remembrance itself as an act of resistance.
In a world scarred by violence and displacement, Abidin’s art insists on the persistence of beauty, memory, and renewal. Galerie Tanit Beirut becomes a space where light and color transform ruins into beginnings, reminding us that what remains can also be what leads us forward.
