Maraya Art Centre is proud to host Your Sun That Kept Setting, a solo exhibition by Lebanese artist Chafa Ghaddar. It delves into the concept of landscapes as evolving fragments, offering a poetic exploration of light and time. The show will welcome all visitors until 10 January 2025.
Ghaddar’s fascination with fragments underpins her artistic philosophy. She views fragments not as incomplete pieces but as entities without defined beginnings, endings, or boundaries. Employing the ancient fresco technique, Ghaddar creates pieces that elevate fragments into autonomous, symbolic forms. This approach reflects the concept of pars pro toto, where a part is seen as representative of the whole.
In her exhibited works, Ghaddar reimagines the panoramic landscape as something that never really starts and that remains incomplete. Her use of soft peach tones and light hues evokes the fleeting beauty of sunrises and sunsets. The sun serves as a metaphor for light, fleeting moments, and emotions. By using materials such as limestone, acrylics, and oil paints, the artist captures and preserves these ephemeral sensations in tangible forms.
The motif of the sunset embodies a duality: grief for what has ended and anticipation for what lies ahead. The phrase “It kept setting” extends this moment, creating a sense of elastic time that invites reflection on the liminal space between endings and beginnings.
About the artist
Chafa Ghaddar (b. 1986, Lebanon) resides in Dubai. She graduated from Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA) in Beirut, where she earned her BFA in 2007 and her Master’s degree in Visual Arts in 2009. In 2012, she further honed her skills in fresco and traditional painting techniques during an intensive course in Florence (Italy).
While Ghaddar’s practice encompasses painting, drawing, photography, and mixed media, it is using the historical fresco technique that she is most interested in. She explores its potential in contemporary art, investigating its physical relationship with the body and its classical ties to figurative painting. Her innovative approach involves detaching frescoed surfaces from walls, folding, and rolling them to create cracks and shadows, embracing unpredictability to expand creative possibilities.
Ghaddar has showcased her art pieces in various shows and art events, such as Art Dubai (2024); Abu Dhabi Art (2023); I AM ONE ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT (Studio La Citta, Verona, Italy, 2021); The Visit (solo) (Galerie Tanit, Beirut, Lebanon, 2018); and City and City (the Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries, New York, USA, 2016), among others. The artist’s public artworks include a fresco commission for Al Safa Library in Dubai (2024) and a site-specific piece for the 16th Lyon Biennale: Manifesto of Fragility (France, 2022).
Among Ghaddar’s accolades is the Boghossian Art Prize for Painting (2014). She has participated in several residencies, such as the Villa Empain (Brussels, Belgium, 2015) and La Corbiere Village Nomade (Switzerland, 2007). She also was part of Tashkeel Studio’s Critical Practice Programme (2018–2019)
To get more information about Your Sun That Kept Setting, please go to the official web page of the exhibition.
In addition, you might be interested in visiting Navigating Through Nothing by Syrian artist Thaier Helal.
