Nélida Nassar 07.20.2026
Looking for an escape in nature? Then head to the secluded Bsous Silk Museum, where an outdoor/indoor visual and sonic installation entitled “Light and Dust” welcomes you. Mounted in commemoration of the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi (1226 – 2026), it is the brainchild of the director of the Italian Cultural Institute of Beirut, Dr. Angelo Gioè. His contemplative and lasting cultural gift to the Lebanese people before bidding farewell to the country asks: Why does St. Francis remain relevant 800 years later? It’s because he does not belong to the past but rather to every era that continues to question itself. Created exclusively for Lebanon, “Light and Dust” is a promenade conceived for all religious communities as a non-confessional initiative by 10 Lebanese artists and musicians. This artistic endeavor is rooted in a Lebanon that wavers between war and peace, between dust and light, with its historical layers, and multiple legacies and wounds. The selection of the Bsous Silk Museum is a fortunate one as the installation sits comfortably in an ancient and silent place such as a caravanserai, a Franciscan cloister or a sacred ruin where the ancient stones may still speak and time continues to breathe. Also, since St. Francis was born the son of a wealthy fabric merchant, the Silk Museum serendipitously evokes that part of his story, too. Moreover, the urban setting is reminiscent of the bucolic towns of Assisi and La Verna. It also offers a fantastical summer landscape inspired partly by the natural world of beautiful olive groves, old stone terraces, and luscious gardens and partly by the earthly narrative painting of Giotto, with its embrace of naturalism and emotional realism.
The visual and sonic presentations combine atmospheric sacred early music and various scenic elements in order to provide encounters that evoke wonder, delight and mystery. The audio part consists of an innovative exploration of musical tones emitted by the surrounding plants and trees. Created by the curator Soula Saad, in collaboration with sound engineer Marwan Tohmé, it uses a combination of sounds to induce an atmosphere that stimulates the mind and awakens the imagination. This is followed by mezzo-soprano Fadia Tomb El-Hage’s ambrosial voice, which fills part of the trail with a pilgrim song from the 14th century Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (“Red Book of Montserrat”), the monodic aria “Virgo Splendens.” Further on one hears a beautiful, meditative improvisation in D Major sung, again, by Tomb El-Hage, with the violin playing, harmonic singing, recording, editing and mixing provided by none other than her daughter Yamane El-Hage. Lighting specialist Nagib Massaad well captures this sensory moment. The visuals include a plethora of out-of-scale artworks. Visitors to this section are greeted by a canvas placed on the ground inviting them to leave behind the city’s visual and auditory pollution by wiping their feet on it. Here one sees Kamal Vagabondo’s paintings and Joanne Hennaoui Audi’s mini-Arabic typographic interventions, including suspended banners inscribed with Franciscan texts in different languages and fonts, printed on modest white cloth. Then come sculptress Arlette Sauveur’s display of bird decoys made from recycled metal and Akl Akl’s origami assemblage of painstakingly executed white paper birds, a nod to St. Francis’s relationship to animals. Next along the promenade are Tony Maalouf’s banners, each of which has a calligraphed word in Arabic: compassion, forgiveness, humility, persistence and peace.
The project’s original vision, however, is somehow lost in translation. The installation is full of shortcuts and it is diminished by a literal reading based on a supposed conflict between the secular aspect of St. Francis’s life and the religious one. An architectural area, or a landscape where one enters and creates one’s own narrative, would have been closer to the original intention. A garden as a mental space where mysterious things live that do not have a story line or a timetable, where the movement stops and starts anywhere – in other words a cyclical motif, such as found in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake –would have been more appropriate. The audio and visual elements are disjointed and fragmented, much like Lebanon itself. All the same, one can still reflect on the surrounding nature and attempt to ponder fundamental questions. Dr. Gioè has written that the installation is “An invitation to see differently… a way of listening, a way of welcoming another person, a way of looking at fragility not as weakness [but] where beauty quietly reveals itself.” This is an empowering, transcendental message of awareness.
The promenade’s apex may be the time it allows one to spend in silence under the pergola or roaming through the Bsous Museum gardens of aromatic plants. Here one discovers the perfect leaf on a fallen log, the dappled light rippling across the leafy ground, the soft but steady burble of water, and the wild calls of the day and night birds. Combined with the company of your friends and loved ones, this experience may be worth a visit!
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“Light and Dust” runs daily from July 16 through July 30, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., at the Bsous Silk Museum in Bsous, Aley, Lebanon.
The exhibition is free and open to the public.
For more information:
Email: info@thesilkmuseum.com
Website: www.thesilkmuseum.com
Phone: +961 5 940 767 or +961 71 454 277
SOUND
Fadia Tomb El-Hage
Vocalist
Chants
Instagram — @fadiatomb
Facebook artist page
Eastman biography
National Arts Centre biography
MUSIC
Yamane
Instrumentation, recording, and mixing of chants
Soula Saad
Artist, curator, and filmmaker
Sound Installation: Immersive Plant Sound Bath
Recorded and live experience
Instagram — @soula.saad
“It Takes a Lot of Hands: Healing Beirut” project — documentary project directed by Soula Saad.
Marwan Tohmé
Composer
Audio for the Light and Dust path, soundtrack, and film sound mix
Instagram — @marwantohme
Ghazel — Bandcamp, composed and performed with Farah Kaddour
SANAM artist biography
VISUAL ARTISTS
AKL AKL
Architect and landscape architect
Installation: Murmuration of Hope
Personal Instagram — @akl_akl
AKL Architects official website
Studio Instagram — @aklarchitects
Behance portfolio
Arlette Sauveur
Artist and poetic sculptor
Installation of upcycled birds made from materials rejected by the sea. Recycling and resilience are central to her work.
Joanne Hennaoui Audi
Architect
JUZUR: A freestanding installation of Arabic letters featuring wooden, poetic letter sculptures
Personal Instagram — @joanne_hennaoui_audi
JUZUR project — @juzurproject
Facebook profile
Kamal Vagabondo
Painter and musician
UCLA, MFA in Theater Arts
Installation: At Birds’ Height
Nagib Massaad
Lighting designer
Light Altar
Instagram — @nagibmassaad
Firefly Lighting Creations — lighting practice linked from his profile.
Tony Maalouf
Artist, sculptor, calligrapher, and poet
Founder of T.Art Gallery and P.O.P. — Palette of Possibilities
Calligraphy on Textile: Maktub
Dr. Ali Harkous
Artist, sculptor, university professor, and museum curator
The Flame A medium-sized stone sculpture
The Bouquet A metalwork representing the gift of flowers
Fired Ceramics A small collection of fired ceramic works
Maya A wooden sculpture inspired by the ancient Maya civilization
Lebanese University — Dr. Ali Harkous and the Faculty of Fine Arts & Architecture
Exhibition feature — Ali Harkous’s stone artwork
ART & CULTURE TODAY 