The Beirut Edition 9 October – 6 December 2025 | Beirut Art Center
Beirut Art Center, in collaboration with British Council Lebanon and Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, is pleased to announce the opening of Port Cities: Fragments of Maritime Routes, on Thursday 9 October 2025, at 6pm.
Bringing together commissioned works by Mohamed Abdelkarim, Laila Hida, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, and Siska, the exhibition explores the port as both material reality and metaphor. It began with residencies in Liverpool in 2024, where the artists engaged with maritime infrastructures and histories of trade, slavery, and migration. Each then returned to their own shoreline—Alexandria, Tunis, Marrakech, and Beirut—to ask what it means to live with these legacies today.
Conceived as a traveling project, Port Cities shifts with each host city, carrying traces while changing form. Following presentations in Liverpool and Marrakech, the Beirut edition takes on a particular urgency: here, the port is not a distant memory but a living wound. The subtitle Fragments of Maritime Routes reflects Beirut’s fractured geographies of circulation—broken passages that shape its relationship to the sea, while suggesting the possibility of recomposition.
The Artists & Works
Mohamed Abdelkarim, Nobody Remembered the Ark, Said the Sea (2024)
A sound installation combining printed fabric and two audio channels, Abdelkarim’s work presents a fragmented narrative voiced by seawater, peripheral characters, and mythical creatures. Drawing on histories of enslavement, naval warfare, and environmental exploitation, the piece speculates on future consequences for the sea and its shores.
Laila Hida, Reversed Landscape (2024)
An installation of photographs, posters, and sculptural elements, Hida’s work interrogates the fabrication of landscapes and Orientalist imaginaries. Centered on Liverpool’s 19th-century Palm House, the project exposes the colonial frameworks of appropriation and commodification underlying its beauty.
Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Heartbeat Wavelines (2024) & ONS (2023)
Kaabi-Linke’s video triptych synchronizes waterlines with human heartbeats, linking ruined hotels in Tunis with Liverpool’s decayed industrial sites. Exhibited alongside ONS, a photographic work reflecting on imbalance and resilience in Tunisian society, her installation meditates on ruin, presence, and disappearance.
Siska, $₮I₺₺ ₩₳₸€₨ ₹U₦ D££₽ (2024)
A 16mm film and performative installation combining a hanging roll of paper and custom-made stamps, Siska’s work explores water as both hope and threat, memory and migration. It exposes the instability beneath seemingly calm surfaces, confronting the intertwined histories of slavery, trade, and displacement.
Project Background
Port Cities is an international collaborative project by Liverpool Arab Arts Festival (LAAF), in partnership with the British Council MENA. The artists were selected with input from curatorial leads in each country and took part in a research residency in Liverpool in February 2024, where they developed their projects through site visits and community engagement.
Previously presented: Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, Liverpool, UK (11–20 July 2024); DaDa and Le18, Marrakech, Morocco (11 April – 30 June 2025)
Current edition: Beirut Art Center, Lebanon (9 October – 6 December 2025)
Acknowledgements
This project has been made possible through the creativity and commitment of many contributors:
LAAF Team — Anne Thwaite, Toufik Douib, Jack Welsh
Artivator Fellow — Lyn Dabbous
British Council Team — Marc Mouarkech, Zeinab Allaw, Abir Aboulmanadel, Mohamad Amine AlKohli
DaDa & Le18 Marrakech Team — Laila Hida, Meryem Fekhari, Leila Sahli, Youssef Zro
With heartfelt thanks to everyone who has shaped each chapter along the way.