Nada Debs x Rina Jaber create Migrations of Butterflies for Art Design Lebanon

Nada Debs recently presented the ‘Merging Butterflies’ concrete installation at Art Design Lebanon, along with Romanian ceramic artist Rina Jaber. The installation, inspired by Nada Debs signature mother of pearl butterflies, brings the cold and dry concrete to life.

The showcase of the installation was organised by Art Design Lebanon or AD Leb, a unique digital platform and gallery that showcases the works of visual artists and designers from across the world. AD Leb operates as a flexible cultural space that believes in promoting a dialogue between the creators they showcase and the visitors who come in to witness their exhibits. In order to cater towards the same, the gallery regularly curates exhibitions at different locations across Lebanon, effectively utilising the different kinds of unconventional spaces offered in the country. Founded by Gaïa Fodoulian, the organisation is now managed by Gaïa’s mother, Annie Vartivarian, after the former’s unfortunate demise in the Beirut port explosion in August 2020.

The special concrete installation is a physical manifestation of the hollowness that is collectively experienced by the population of Lebanon in recent years, what with the fall in the country’s economy, increasingly challenging living conditions, political downfall and the consequent mass migration of several Lebanese families. The butterfly imprints on the concrete boulders can be seen as representative of the absence that is left behind by migrating Lebanons, both in the spaces that they previously occupied and in the hearts of their loved ones. 

Created in collaboration with Rina Jaber, a Romanian artist who was raised in Libya and Lebanon, the installation also offers a chance to confront the complexity of human emotions, to explore the latent emotion of hope that more often than not layers the feelings of grief, sadness and emptiness, and to confront the fact the fragility and fleetingness of life itself.