Nada Sehnaoui – Photo by Milad Ayoub
The artist Nada Sehnaoui is presenting her solo exhibition entitled Flowers Blossomed Out of Broken Concrete at kenshō, curated by Saleh Barakat, with a text by Marie Tomb.
The August 4, 2020, explosion at the port of Beirut killed 218 people and wounded thousands. Nada Sehnaoui’s studio was destroyed, and in this ruptured space, an organic process imposed itself: she began sculpting canvas and holding the shapes together with thick layers of paint, until the volumes swelled and bust with flowers.
Sehnaoui’s flowers were born out of tragedy. Their resolve is neither optimistic nor naïve – it is a force that arises organically. It extends the impulse running through her oeuvre, which rebels against the erasure of Memory following conflict and disruption.
Nada Sehnaoui wrote: “Five years later, I still find broken glass in my studio, hidden in the most unexpected places. Five years later, flowers blossomed out of broken concrete.”
The exhibition presents Sehnaoui’s latest works, the mixed-media sculpture and painting series Flowers Blossomed Out of Broken Concrete, in dialogue with two series of particular poignancy.
The series of canvases Loin des Mauvaises Nouvelles du Monde (2018-2022) enquires into the faint possibility of a world where violence is rendered obsolete. Small, ethereal canvases host lustrous circular forms in motion, their lightness deliberately standing against the relentless pressure of troubling news.
Then, the series of paintings How Many, How Many More (2015-2019), which Sehnaoui painted in response to ongoing wars in the region, likewise demonstrates that resistance isn’t embodied in a single gesture but has a sustained rhythm, as she covered the canvas with short brushstrokes layered with found objects to create ambiguity between personal and collective experience.
The exhibition will be on view until January 11, 2026, at kenshō, Mar Mikhael, Beirut.
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About the Artist
Nada Sehnaoui is a Beirut-based visual artist whose body of work deals with the scars of wars, personal memory and public amnesia, the construction of identity, and the struggle to keep our dreams alive.
She has engaged with these issues through paintings, sculptures, and public installations since the early 1990s. In her painting practice, she often incorporates objects, words, and archival images within painted canvases to provoke discussions around the enduring impact of trauma and contested memories. Since the 2000s, Sehnaoui has played an influential role on the Lebanese and Middle Eastern art scene as a pioneer of large-scale public installations. In these works, she often repurposes dozens of everyday objects to address the memory of war, the urgency of memory work, and the need for collective healing.