About Elias Nafaa
Elias Nafaa is an artist living and working in Lebanon. His artistic practice is informed by his background in architecture, it looks into space as a place of storytelling. His process-driven approach explores language and issues of identity. Through artworks and projects that he developed, his work sheds light on the political through the personal; it is highly subjective, often non-linear, and spatially nuanced.
His work has been featured at MACAM, and Galerie Tanit (Lebanon). In 2021, he was the youngest artist selected to exhibit at Lights of Lebanon: modern and contemporary art from 1950 to today at the Arab World Institute IMA in Paris (France). His work is now part of the permanent collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the IMA.
‘Impulsions’ marks his first solo exhibition at ArtLab (Lebanon) with the support of the British Council Lebanon. Photographs by Laetitia El Hakim.
Artist Statement
“I was in the silent zone of a symphony, having heard the first notes but not knowing how it would end. I would try to put my emotions into words, but the words would escape me. And I felt as if I could spend an eternity longing for something that was lost, though I could not say why.”
About "Impulsions"
In a forced state of stillness and solitude, “Impulsions” emerged uncontrollably through a series of actions that externalized an internal state of mind. A coping mechanism that provided comfort in times of turmoil. The exhibition is the outcome of this process that Nafaa began in early 2021, and unfolded over a year, in one continuous act. This culminated in a fluid, impulse-driven approach where thoughts, feelings, and anxieties project onto sheets of paper without any intention to conform to pre-established modes of representation. This act reclaimed the artist's intrinsic natural tendencies as the main drive for his expression.
The exhibition highlights a fragment of these impulses in a chronological progression from January 2021 to March 2021 and invites visitors to experience this act in space.