An Article by M. R. (833 words, 4 min. read)
The Tree That Remembers
An exhibition that invites us to remember. Echoes of Existence, is presented at the Nuhad Es-Said Pavilion for Culture at the National Museum of Beirut until October 21, 2026. Curated by Muriel Asmar, under the patronage of the Lebanese Ministry of Culture and organized by the Embassy of Italy in Lebanon, the exhibition brings together the Italian master Enzo Cucchi, the Lebanese artist Gilbert Halaby, and a remarkable selection of modern Lebanese paintings chosen by Saleh Barakat. Together, they remind us that a landscape is never merely a place. It is a memory waiting to be awakened.
A Different Symbol of Lebanon
The cedar has long embodied the image of Lebanon. Yet another tree has quietly accompanied generations of Lebanese families, villages and mountains. The pine has watched children grow, sheltered walkers from the summer sun and colored entire hillsides with its unmistakable silhouette. It is part of our daily landscape, almost so familiar that it risks becoming invisible.
This exhibition restores its place. It reminds us that the pine belongs to our collective memory.
Today, as pine forests face increasing environmental threats, the exhibition acquires another dimension. It becomes both an artistic tribute and a discreet appeal to preserve a living heritage before memory itself begins to disappear.
Two Shores, One Landscape
Rather than placing Italy and Lebanon side by side, Muriel Asmar allows them to speak the same language.
The Mediterranean becomes a shared geography of emotions. The same light falls on different mountains. The same wind bends different trees. The same longing for home travels across the sea.
Without forcing comparisons, the exhibition reveals how artists separated by countries and generations can arrive at remarkably similar reflections on nature, memory and belonging.
Gilbert Halaby and the Forest Within
Gilbert Halaby’s paintings are places reconstructed by memory. His monumental compositions break mountains into planes of colour and rhythm, as though memory itself were assembling scattered fragments into a single image. The pine trees rise quietly through these compositions like familiar companions that have survived every passing season.
One of the most striking moments of the exhibition is the monumental installation where the painted forest continues onto the floor, inviting visitors to stand at its centre. The perspective changes completely. Looking upward toward the sky or downward toward its reflection becomes almost the same experience. The visitor no longer observes the forest from outside. One becomes part of it.
Nearby, Halaby’s poem dedicated to Mount Sannine adds another layer to the experience. Words and painting become inseparable. The mountain is transformed into a witness of childhood, friendship, departure and return. It is no longer geography. It becomes biography.
Enzo Cucchi’s Imagined Nature
Enzo Cucchi approaches nature through poetry and symbolism. A leading figure of the Italian Transavanguardia movement, he has spent decades creating a visual language nourished by mythology, memory and literature. His trees belong as much to dreams as to forests. His symbols seem to emerge from ancient stories whose origins have long been forgotten.
His installation opens the exhibition like the first chapter of a poem. Drawings, sculptures and images invite visitors into a universe where nature is never descriptive. It becomes symbolic, timeless and profoundly human.
A Conversation Across Generations
The modern Lebanese paintings selected by Saleh Barakat enrich this dialogue without interrupting it.
It reveals a remarkable understanding of the evolution of Lebanese art. Rather than assembling celebrated names, he constructs a visual narrative that traces how generations of painters have returned to the same landscape through profoundly different artistic languages. Each work finds its place with precision, allowing the conversation between the contemporary and the modern to unfold naturally.
Through this thoughtful vision, the pine tree emerges as a silent thread connecting artists across decades. Some celebrate its serenity. Others seek its strength. Others transform it into memory itself. Seen together, these paintings reveal that the Lebanese landscape has never been merely a backdrop. It has been a source of identity, emotion and artistic invention, constantly renewed through the eyes of each generation.
When Art Protects More Than Beauty
Perhaps the greatest achievement of Echoes of Existence lies in its ability to make us reconsider something we believed we already knew.
A tree ceases to be a tree. It becomes childhood. It becomes home. It becomes history. It becomes the fragile thread connecting generations who may never have met but who have all walked beneath the same branches.
The exhibition reminds us that artists do more than preserve images. They preserve ways of seeing. Long after forests have changed and landscapes have evolved, paintings continue to safeguard the emotions once attached to them.
Leaving the Pavilion, one does not simply remember colors or compositions. One remembers the silence of a mountain, the scent of pine carried by the wind, and the quiet certainty that a country’s identity is written not only in its monuments, but also in the trees that have watched over its people for centuries.
