Manar Ali Hassan

Ode to Beirut - Figure 1 2020 mixed media 42 x 29.7

Ode to Beirut 8 2020 mixed media 42 x 29.7

​Manar Ali Hassan was born in 1980 in Beirut, Lebanon. She is an emerging multidisciplinary visual artist and graphic design instructor, with a BA in Art Education (2002) and a BA in Graphic Design. In 2019, Manar earned her Master in Visual Arts with distinction for the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) - University of Balamand.

Ode to Beirut is a visceral reaction to the Beirut blast that took place on August 4, 2020. It queries the notion of collapsing space and time into one image. The analogue of the unescapable event is reshuffled as a trapped succession of distortions, where the figures representing a painful body are dissolving into several fields and breaking up, hinting at the devastated city.