Chafa Ghaddar Lebanese, b. 1986

Biography

Wall painting and surface finishing are central to Chafa Ghaddar’s practice. She explores the use of fresco as a contemporary mode of making, as well as other techniques, and works equally with murals, painting, drawing, photography, and mixed media.

The artist executes site-specific and public artworks, and has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Beirut, Dubai, New York, Brussels, and Verona. Her latest was a solo show at Maraya Art Center, Sharjah. In 2022, Ghaddar was commissioned to produce a site-specific work for the 16th Lyon Biennale, Manifesto of Fragility, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. She has been awarded several artist fellowships and residencies, including the Tashkeel Studio Critical Practice Program in 2018/2019 (with a solo exhibition), the Salama Emerging Artist Fellowship (SEAF, 2018), and the artist-in-residence program at the Villa Empain (Brussels, 2015), which also awarded her the Boghossian Art Prize for painting in 2014.

Ghaddar graduated from Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA), where she earned her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts degree in 2007 and a Master’s in Visual Arts in 2009. In 2012, she attended an intensive course in fresco and traditional painting techniques in Florence, Italy, an experience that continues to inform her practice today. In 2024 she completed a 6-month teaching artist fellowship awarded by DCT.

Ghaddar has been developing a teaching practice across notable art institutions in the UAE such as NYU Abu Dhabi, Istituto Marangoni, Dubai and The Arts Club, Dubai.

EDUCATION

2009, MA in Visual Arts and new Medias, ALBA, Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts, Beirut

2007, BA in Fine Arts, ALBA, Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts, Beirut

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CHAFA GHADDAR ON FRESCO

"Fresco matures twice. In its first stage, it is a work of construction: surfaces are initiated, visuals are painted, the artist is active, and the medium becomes solid. In its second stage, the work manifests itself through its own degradation: the decay of the skin, the absence of the artist and the resistance of what remains.

Through frescoes, I explore the manifestation of time on surfaces. Historical gesture appears in conversation with the present. Traces are evoked or retained, then investigated. Temporalities clash. I explore the paradox of a medium that can be timeless and vulnerable at once. I combine it with other techniques, particularly to process the idea of trace and fragmentation of time and space. I contest its immaculate historicity to suggest new boundaries and territories. I relate to the sensuality of its surfaces that encapsulate every gesture and every error. I see it as a living material, constantly subject to growth. Fresco allows me to pierce an ecosystem of consistencies and paradoxes, and make them mine".

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2024, Your Sun That Kept Setting, Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE
2023, Beneath Latent Skies, Tabari Artspace, UAE
2021, Cacti in a Daydream, Galerie Tanit hors-les-murs, Beirut

2019-2020, Recesses, Tashkeel Studios and Galleries, Dubai, UAE

2018, The Visit, Galerie Tanit, Beirut

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2026, Same Air, Tabari Artspace, Dubai, UAE
2025, The Power of Intention (Just as a Talisman), Villa Cramer, Brera District, Milan, Italy
2024, In Real Time, NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE
2021, How Will It End? Fondation Boghossian, Brussels, curated by Alicia Knock and Louma Salame

2021, I Am One Acquainted with the Night, Studio La Citta, Verona, Italy

2018, Made in Tashkeel, Dubai, UAE

2017, Feminites Plurielles, Galerie Tanit, Beirut

2016, City and City, the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, New York (curated by Natasha Marie Llorens)

2015, L’espace de la feuille, Galerie Tanit, Beirut (curated by Clémence Cottard and Marc Mouarkech)

2014, Nostalgic Imagery, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut (curated by Nadine Majdalani Bekdache and BAKS/art concepts)

Journey through our Heritage, Beirut Exhibition Centre (curated by Janine Maamari)

2011, Beirut Past and Present, Art Lounge and Kaslik University, Beirut (curated by Yasmine Chemaly)

2010, Space of crime, village of Maaser el Chouf, Lebanon (curated by Ghada Hage)

2009, Tout un chacun, Vieme Jeux de la Francophonie, Unesco, Beirut (curated by Ghada Hage)

Badger I, UN événement autour de l’image, in a factory in Bourj Hammoud, Beirut (curated by Ghada Hage)

2012, Exposure 2012, a juried group exhibition at Beirut Art Centre, Beirut, Jury: Amanda Abi Khalil (curator), Gilbert Hage (artist), Jannane al-Ani (artist), Khalil Rabah (artist) and the board of Beirut Art Center

COMMISSIONS

2023, I Am Still Learning, tile mural, Safa Public Library, Dubai, UAE (Commissioned by Art Dubai, curated by Amanda Abi Khalil, supported by Tashkeel and DCAA)
2021, The Fifth Month, fresco mural, Mar Mikhael, Beirut
2017-2023, Permanent Public Artwork, Art Dubai A.I.R. Programme in collaboration with Dubai Culture and Tashkeel, Al Safa Public Library, UAE
2014, Breath is a Sculpture, assisting Giuseppe Penone with site-specific mural Propagazione, Beirut Art Center

2011—, Frescoes, Murals and Surface Interventions in over 25 private spaces and residences

SPECIAL PROJECTS

2025, Hermès Commission, Dubai Mall, UAE
2024, Gucci Art Program, Mall of the Emirates, Dubai, UAE
2020, KJCHAPTERVII, backdrop painting with fashion designer Krikor Jabotian, Beirut
2017, Strata, fresco mural with A Hypothetical Office and Zuleika Penniman, Design Days Dubai, UAE
2016, Reincarnation, backdrop painting with Krikor Jabotian, Beirut
2012, On Fleeting Grounds, photography collective, Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut
2010, Visuals of a City in Flux, photography collective, UNESCO, Beirut

ART FAIRS

2024, Abu Dhabi Art, UAE
Art Dubai, UAE

2023, Abu Dhabi Art, UAE
2022, MENART FAIR Paris- Galerie Tanit Beirut/Munich

2021, MENART FAIR Paris- Une histoire de Bleu, Galerie Tanit Beirut/Munich, Germany

2018, Beirut Art Fair, Galerie Tanit Beirut/Munich, Germany

2018, Art Dubai, Galerie Tanit Beirut/Munich, Germany

BIENNALES

2022, Commissioned to be part of the 16th Lyon Biennale, Manifesto of fragility, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Felrath

COLLECTIONS

Boghossian Foundation (Brussels), Tashkeel Foundation (Dubai), Fondation Saradar (Beirut)

Byblos Bank Headquarters, Beirut

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & PRESS

2025, Lebanese Artist Chafa Ghaddar Dives Deep Into the Vulnerability of Walls, Architectural Digest
2025, The 11 Best Things to Do in Dubai in April, Architectural Digest

2024, The span of a day. Lebanese artist Chafa Ghaddar elevates the fresco technique to conceptual highs, Hadara Magazine
2024, Gucci’s boutique in Mall of the Emirates reopens with a newly reimagined space, Gucci

2023, The Power of Storytelling, FEMMEFEST

2023, Textural Intimacies: Skin as Surface, Nadine Khalil
2022, In Conversation, Musée Gadagne, Lyon
2020, A Lexicon in Celebration of Recesses, Jill Magi
2020, Recesses, Kevin Jones

2020, Blue Was a Revolution: Ongoing Notes Towards Fresco

2020, The Diary of an Artist in Interesting Times, Selections Magazine

2019, Féminités Plurielles, Galerie Tanit

2018, The Residues of Elsewhere, Kevin Jones
2018, Le WAW: A Wondrous Visit from Chafa Ghaddar
2017, Art Dubai Blog: Q&A with A.I.R. Dubai 2017 Artist
2017, Art Dubai Blog: A.I.R. Dubai 2017

2016, Absent Beirut: Reflections on Reflections, Ibraaz, Natasha Marie Llorens

2016, Apres l’Alba- Academie Libanaise des Beaux Arts, Beirut

2013, Journey through our Heritage, Beirut Exhibition Center
2012, Exposure 2012, Beirut Art Center

RESIDENCIES AND AWARDS

2024, Teaching Artist Fellowship, Manarat Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Fresco public commission, Al Safa Library, Dubai, UAE
2014, Awarded the Boghossian Art Prize for Painting

2007, Scholarship, ENSBA, Paris (October-November)

2015, Boghossian Art Foundation, Brussels, (October-November)

2007, La Corbiere Village Nomade, Switzerland (July)

PROFESSIONAL TRAINING
2023-2024, Teaching Artist Fellowship, Art Studio, Abu Dhabi, UAE
2022–2023, Nominated for SEAF (Salama Bint Hamdan Emerging Artist Fellowship)
2018–2019, Critical Practice Programme, Tashkeel Studio, Dubai, UAE

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Works
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Chafa Ghaddar Lebanese, b. 1986

Embrace , 2022 - 2023

Fresco on wood
43 x 32 cm
16 7/8 x 12 5/8 in

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Further images

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Exhibitions
Beneath Latent Skies is the first part of a series of exhibitions by Lebanese contemporary artist, Chafa Ghaddar,
Working across multiple media, Chafa Ghaddar casts a contemporary gaze towards the historic fresco mural painting technique. The exploration and excavation of new potentials in materiality and process are central to her practice. Ghaddar makes palpable the tension between durability and impermanence and unpacks a non-linear journey that departs from fresco painting’s classical associations and arrives in the present.
In 2022 Ghaddar exhibited at the 16th Lyon Biennale under the ‘Manifesto of Fragility’. Site specific works such as the powerful suspended mixed media work, Collapsing hues, 2022 and Rested, 2022 a mixed media on canvas work saw Ghaddar delve into the contradictions and conflicts of her medium as something that is at once vulnerable and eternal; the works produced for this solo exhibition are a continuation of these considerations.
This new body of work, Beneath Latent Skies, will see Ghaddar tackle the notion of the body as a landscape and host of multiple agendas - a site of eroticism, violence, movement, temporality, love, despair and repair. Together these pieces summon a tension between spaces - flesh, land and sky. The artist raises questions: Can the body really be a landscape? What has happened to the promise of fresco and its suggestion of enduring stability? What does the body promise us? Does it fail us? Why is Ghaddar’s sky muted - where are the clouds?
Artworks produced in varying scale span installation, works on paper, wood and fabric and depart from the tradition and practice of fresco that remains central to Ghaddar’s oeuvre. In addition to monumental fresco works and site-specific installations, Ghaddar has produced works on paper in varying scale. Ghaddar’s process and experimentation with materiality is central to the work. Some pieces have, for example, been produced on Indian cotton paper layered with coffee and tea, and mural stucco; carved into with the gestural strokes of a knife blade. Her self-made canvas is brought to life with a palette of fleshy tones, the black of damp moss and grass and fresco’s ubiquitous blue in varying depth and density, glazed to achieve a plasticised effect. Testament to the artist’s preoccupation with the boundaries and limitations of her materials these works appear to be ceramic yet they are in fact paper. One work sees Ghaddar reveal an abstracted scene, a moment of passion between two lovers, while others afford a glimpse into skin and markers of the human body, zoomed into and celebrated at outsized proportions. In addition to these new works Ghaddar will also exhibit historic pieces: Exhausted Forms, 2022, produced for the Lyon Biennial and Corps, 2018 a delicate flesh hued fresco that foregrounds the human torso, mounted upon wood.
Through this manipulation of scale, Ghaddar’s pieces form metaphorical windows; portals that invite the viewer to gaze into an alternate realm, or repel them from it. The questions that preoccupy the artist are presented to the viewer in a manner that’s both challenging and sublime.

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Exhibitions