Nadia von Maltzahn:
Lebanon's Art World in Catastrophic Times: Visual Arts in the 1980s and Art History Now

In an interview in the Lebanese newspaper L’Orient-Le Jour in January 1982, Lebanese artist Amine El Bacha said that “to paint is to put the war in brackets”. The 1980s in Lebanon were dominated by war, destruction, and displacement, but they were also a time of continuities and new beginnings. In this talk, I will give insights into Lebanon’s visual arts in the 1980s in the middle of Lebanon’s civil war (1975-1990). By interrelating context and artistic production, the nuances of how artists and institutions navigated this troubled decade will be analysed. One concern is also to rethink the conventional periodization of Lebanon’s history into, first, a golden—or “gilded”—age between the 1950s and mid-1970s, then a war period, and finally a postwar period starting in the 1990s. Whereas the so-called postwar generation of artists engaged extensively with the aftermath and memory of the war, in the midst of conflict artists applied different approaches to their engagement with what was happening around them. I will finish the talk by reflecting on what it means to write and document Lebanon’s art history in the catastrophic times of today, where we find ourselves in war again, following other recent catastrophes such as Lebanon’s severe and ongoing financial crisis and Beirut’s port explosion.

Nadia von Maltzahn is the principal investigator of the ERC-funded project “Lebanon’s Art World at Home and Abroad” (LAWHA), hosted by the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB). Her publications include The Syria-Iran Axis: Cultural Diplomacy and International Relations in the Middle East (2013/2015), The Art Salon in the Arab Region: Politics of Taste Making (co-edited with Monique Bellan, 2018), and editing the Manazir Journal issue Defying the Violence: Lebanon’s Visual Arts in the 1980s (2025). She holds a DPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from St Antony’s College, Oxford. Her research interests include cultural politics, artistic practices and the circulation of knowledge. In November 2026 she will take up the position of Associate Professor (Storia e Istituzioni dell’Asia) at Sapienza University of Rome.