Ode to Beirut by Manar Ali Hassan

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. The semi-transparent background is an ellipsis that reveals nothing, yet suggests the possibility of seeing other realms. All the while taking into consideration the emotional states that could be conveyed by not rendering the event as we see it, but as we experience it emotionally, hoping to find in these isolated caged figures empowering forms to contemplate.