Lebanese artist turns blast debris into symbol of hope
BEIRUT: She stands nearly three metres tall with her arm raised, the wind whipping the hair away from her scarred face, and a broken clock at her feet with the hands showing 6.08, the time that a blast ripped through Beirut port on the evening of Aug. 4. The unnamed statue by Lebanese artist Hayat Nazer is made of broken glass and twisted materials that belonged to people’s homes before the explosion that killed 200 and injured 6,000, and symbolises the city’s hopes of rising from the rubble.
Hayat Nazer was born and raised in Tripoli, Lebanon. Since she was a teenager, she has spent a substantial time volunteering with NGOS in vulnerable neighbourhoods, where
Lebanese and Palestinians live. A self-taught painter, she is an arts and science graduate from the Lebanese American University in Beirut. Her passion for the humanitarian work led her on a roller coaster ride taking her from Beirut to London.
Her artwork is a reflection of her activities and her goal to create change through her paintings, which are inspired by her humanitarian work. “If you look at the statue, one half has a leg standing, the hand looks surrendered, there is a scar on the face with the flying hair and the clock on this side, as if the explosion is still happening,” Nazer said. “But the other hand and the other leg... is leaning as if it is starting to walk and the hand is raised, it wants to continue, it wants to keep going and rise from the rubble. And this is the truth, this is our truth,” the 33-year-old said.
The huge blast, which levelled a swathe of Beirut and made some 300,000 residents homeless, has compounded Lebanon’s worst financial crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war. Nazer believes in Lebanese resilience. She says those affected by the blast who saw the 2.6-metre statue, temporarily displayed in front of the damaged port, drew strength and hope to carry on.
Nazer had already started on a female sculpture before the blast, but volunteered to help clean up destroyed houses and streets. At night, she would return to the sculpture, using the shards of glass and metal pieces she had collected. “I felt like Beirut was a woman... who despite what she suffered... is very strong,” she said. Inspired by Lebanese singer Majida El Roumi’s “Beirut, Lady of the World” and its lyrics “Rise from under the rubble,” Nazer says the statue took her a litle more than two months to complete.
She did not name the artwork because she wanted the public to do so. This is not the first time Nazer has used debris in her art. Her previous works include a model of the mythological Phoenix made out of pieces of protesters’ burnt tents, and a heart-shaped sculpture from stones and empty teargas canisters collected from clashes between protesters and security forces.
Meanwhile, Lebanese stained glass artist Maya Husseini had hoped to retire ater decades spent designing colourful windows, but she has been flooded with work since the blast that ripped through Beirut. “I can’t possibly not try to restore what is gone,” said the 60-yearold woman, her bright red curly hair in a short bob. The massive explosion at the capital’s port many and wounded thousands more as it sent lethal shockwaves pummelling through the city. But it also ravaged dozens of Beirut’s most cherished heritage buildings. Husseini is one of several artists slowly starting to restore artworks devastated in the disaster. In her basement workshop on the outskirts of Beirut, she gestured at what remained of windows of a 19th-century church she had restored ater the 1975-1990 civil war.
A gaping mess of mangled metal, doted by a few surviving pieces of orange and blue glass, lay in a cardboard box. “At least seven projects I had worked on were blown away,” Husseini said. They included one of her first projects designing biblical scenes on glass for a church, and the dazzling yellow and orange windows she had crated for the famed Sursock Museum. Before the blast, she had planned to retire ater completing glass windows for a last cathedral in Jordan.
“But now I won’t allow myself to stop,” she said. On her work table, she picked a green piece of glass and lodged it between curving lengths of sot lead to rebuild a window of flowers and leaves for a private home. Even if she has now taken on apprentices, she said there is still a lot of work ahead. “For some people who have asked me, I won’t be able to start anything for at least two years,” she said. In neighbourhoods near the port, the race is on to cover up 100 heritage buildings before the autumn rain.
The United Nations culture and education fund, Unesco had said it will hold a conference to try to drum up hundreds of millions of dollars for restorations. But until that aid arrives, Lebanese are doing what they can on their own.