Selections Arts ran an interview with Chafa Ghaddar on 9 December 2024 as part of its Artistic Unity issue, a themed edition devoted to the UAE art scene. The unbylined feature covers the six years since her move to Dubai and the way daily life there, rather than only her Lebanese background, has come to shape her work.
Ghaddar describes how commuting and shifting between studio spaces pushed her to reimagine fresco, traditionally fixed to a wall, in portable formats, and she talks about her 2023 solo exhibition Beneath Latent Skies at Tabari Artspace as the clearest expression of that shift so far. The interview also covers her delayed 2017 public art commission for Al Safa Library, her participation in Campus Art Dubai and Tashkeel's Critical Practice Programme, and fellowships including the SEAF Fellowship and a Teaching Artists Fellowship in Abu Dhabi. She discusses working with architect Zahra Mansoor on exhibition design and a collaborative performance built around the colour blue with educator Jill Maggie.
Read together, the interview traces Chafa Ghaddar's shift from a Beirut-trained fresco painter into an artist whose UAE surroundings now shape her subject matter directly, with Beneath Latent Skies standing as the fullest public statement of that change to date.
