Absence and Erasure, 2026

Sara Chaar   Emerging artists

In this series, my paintings emerge from the walls of Beirut, marked by time and wear. Working from photographs of cracked facades, I extract fragments of forms that become a visual vocabulary throughout the works. These fragments move through the paintings, sometimes visible, sometimes buried beneath the surface.

The paint, mixed with wax, is built up in successive layers. I cover the surface and scrape it back, sometimes allowing what lies beneath to reappear. It cracks, peels, and shifts. This process echoes the walls from which the work originates, without seeking to reproduce them.

The paintings resist a single reading. They may evoke landscapes seen from above, fragmented territories, eroded maps, or something more intimate: skin, the interior of the body. Fissures open into passages, shifting the eye from landscape to body. A landscape can become a body; a body can open into territory.

In this way, the paintings become palimpsests. Layers accumulate while certain traces persist or resurface. But what lies beneath does not belong only to what has been. It remains active, pushing through the material and shaping what appears. The inside works upon the surface.

Sara Chaar