Rawya El Chab Tends to the Wounds of Lebanon's Civil War
Lebanese artist Rawya El Chab, 45, is continuing her performance series Crossing the Water with a 2025 installment that addresses life under military occupation following Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the broader context of Lebanon’s Civil War and the Lebanese Left in the 1980s. The piece, staged at The Brick in Brooklyn and concluding its run in December, uses mythology and storytelling—including a scene in which El Chab rows across the River Styx—to explore surveillance, censorship, and the reshaping of historical narratives. El Chab links her current work and teaching in Sunset Park, where some children of immigrants have expressed fear of ICE, to her own memories of Beirut under Syrian and later Israeli occupation. The series is also rooted in family history, including her father’s flight to Abidjan after 1982 and the legacy of her cousin Loula Abboud, a Communist fighter mythologized as “the Pearl of the Bekaa,” which helped inspire the project’s development beginning with a 2024 performance.
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This story was covered in Museum Power Plays, Digital Dreams Collapse