Casa Árabe has organized this talk with Tanya Traboulsi and Tamara Kalo, two of the artists forming part of the exhibition What Lies in Between, winner of the NUR-PHotoESPAÑA call for entries in 2025. They will be accompanied by the exhibition’s curator, Ana Belén García Mula.

Three artists, Taysir Batniji, Tanya Traboulsi and Tamara Kalo, invite us to contemplate the complex reality of their corner of the Arab world from an intimate, unembellished perspective. These are places marked by reconstruction, loss and resilience. Although their trajectories differ, they share an undercurrent which runs through their works and instills them with a poetic force that transcends the personal. Far from a strictly documentary approach, this exhibition proposes an immersion into deeper layers of meaning which rarely reach the headlines. Using the image as an expressive tool capable of transforming and healing, the artists reconstruct fragmented narratives about places damaged by violence and uprooting, reinterpreting experiences there on the basis of the symbolic and the aesthetic.

 Tamara Kalo, deeply connected to the living memory of the territory, pays tribute to the olive tree, an age-old emblem of permanence and intergenerational harmony. In her work, she also draws attention towards one of Beirut’s most emblematic skyscrapers, a former prison that provides a home to many birds today. Although nature has reclaimed it, the building is still standing: its demolition is unfeasible as a result of the huge expense required to take it down, thus leaving a painful scar behind on the city’s urban landscape. 

Tanya Traboulsi, on the other hand, offers us an intimate, humanistic view of Beirut before the recent conflict broke out. Through her personal memories and reunion with the city after a long stay in Europe, Traboulsi portrays a peaceful Beirut, filled with both stillness and resistance. Her delicate, honest approach guides us through a city charged with nostalgia, while also marked by the emotional resilience of its inhabitants. 

As part of the exhibition opening event, the two artists will be speaking with the curator, Ana Belén García Mula. The event will be introduced by Karim Hauser, coordinator of Casa Árabe’s Cultural Programs.

You can watch the conference on our YouTube channel. 

Image: Tanya Traboulsi. "Beirut Recurring Dream"

Further information: https://en.casaarabe.es/eventos-arabes/show/photography-memory-and-resilience-what-lies-in-between