In her most recent exhibition Wild Mindscapes (2024), Ghada Zoghbi invited us to contemplate the poetic relationship between humanity and the earth—particularly through the lens of stones of ancient Earth, landscapes formed by nature or human hands.

In this new body of work, Zoghbi succeeds in offering a more intimate vision. Vast panoramic spaces and sudden plunging views trace the marks and scars of exposed grounds. With mastery of technique and a rare sensitivity, she renders the aftermath of Lebanese valleys and landscape vistas.

Her compositions are furtive, often leaning toward monochrome, where each work leads intuitively to the next. She reflects with metaphysical weight: “In the confusion between times, movement gathers weight. One frame can hold it still, an image. Released, it dissolves, a memory.”

Where Zoghbi once evoked ancestral presences who walked these lands, she now confronts us with the traces of yesterday or even today’s aftermath. The “stones of ancient earth” have been ground into dust and mud. As spectators, we stand witness to this silence—fresh memories ploughed into the immediacy of the present: “Traces traveling in every direction, sometimes none at all.”

Her paintings bear witness to her ongoing exploration of “quasi-abstract mineral landscapes,” infused with remnants of human presence. Charcoal touches illuminate glowing colors, where warm oranges meet blues and greens, shaping a poetic harmony across the canvases.

The exhibition unfolds as a meditative gaze: “Here, there is no forward and no return—only the slow drifting of what we once carried, and may have left behind, becoming something else.”

Hanibal Srouji

About the artist

Ghada Zoghbi is a Lebanese artist, born in Shmestar in 1980. At the age of 18, she moved to Beirut to enroll in art teachers’ college, and in 2010, earned a degree in Fine Art from the Lebanese University.

Her first solo show, “Regimes of the Personal” (2016), took place at Artspace Gallery, Beirut, where she presented 13 oil paintings, each telling the personal story of a random person in her local community, through images of their closets, launching her questioning of the relation between personal and common.

In 2021, Zoghbi held her second solo exhibition, “Pretty Abandoned”, at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, and was met with great critical and popular acclaim. In this series, she carried on with her exploration of the connection between human beings and their surrounding spaces. Her third solo exhibition “Wild Mindscapes” took place at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, in September 2024.

Zoghbi has been taking part in several collective exhibitions and art fairs in Lebanon and abroad, such as London, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, Algeria, UAE, and France. Her work was selected to be exhibited at the 31st and 32nd editions of Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne (2012 and 2017), as well as the Institut du Monde Arabe (2018). Her group exhibitions include “30 Years of Color” (2023), “Celebrating Painting” (2022), “Beirut 2020” and “October 17, 2019” (2020) at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, as well as “Beirut Year Zero” (2020) at ArtHaus Beirut.

Her paintings have been acquired by several private collectors, and is part of the Sursock Museum’s permanent collection. Zoghbi’s work is regularly exhibited at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, who represents her in Beirut.

She insists on having no political or religious affiliations and refuses to adhere to borders drawn and created by power. As an art teacher for 21 years, she worked to enrich young children’s educational experience through art, including inner-city kids and refugee students in Lebanon, before devoting her time to her personal practice.

Ghada Zoghbi’s fourth solo show “Between Dust and Dawn” takes place at Galerie Janine Rubeiz, from September 10 to October 10, 2025.