Shifting Crossroads / Beirut Contemporary

Saikalis Bay Foundation presents “Shifting Crossroads | Beirut Contemporary”, a group exhibition that explores Beirut as a cultural crossroads of the Mediterranean, where histories intersect and are reconfigured through artistic practice. Conceived as a space of encounter and transmission, the exhibition reflects on the city as a site moving between memory and archive, presence and absence, the visible and the invisible.

Bringing together works across multiple media—including works on paper, banners, ceramics, photography and video—the exhibition presents practices that engage with layered narratives and intimate perspectives. Beirut emerges as a palimpsest of histories, where traces of the past remain active within contemporary artistic languages. Borders are approached not as fixed limits but as shifting thresholds, where identities, stories and geographies intersect and transform.

The exhibition addresses historical and geopolitical contexts, from the late Ottoman period and the Sykes–Picot Agreement to the French Mandate, alongside earlier references and cultural exchanges across the Mediterranean. The participating artists engage with these legacies as open questions, transforming fractures into spaces of relation and continuity.

Artists: Catherine Cattaruzza, Simone Fattal, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Mona Hatoum, Lamia Joreige, Omar Mismar, Rabih Mroué, Stéphanie Saadé, Soraya Salwan Hammoud, Akram Zaatari