Biography
Chafa Ghaddar was born in Ghazieh, Lebanon in 1986 and lives and works in Dubai. She studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts in Beirut — BA in Fine Arts 2007, MA in Visual Arts 2009 — then in 2012 travelled to Florence to study fresco and traditional painting techniques in intensive immersion. The technique became the centre of her practice: not as historical curiosity but as a conceptual material, a medium that is simultaneously timeless and vulnerable, that holds the trace of time within its very surface. She won the Boghossian Art Prize for painting in 2014 and was artist-in-residence at Villa Empain in Brussels in 2015. She participated in Tashkeel's Critical Practice Programme in Dubai in 2018–2019. She was commissioned for the 16th Lyon Biennale in 2022, curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath. She has received commissions from Hermès and Gucci, and executed public murals for the Al Safa Art and Design Library in Dubai. Her work has been shown at Tabari Artspace, Galerie Tanit in Beirut, Maraya Art Center in Sharjah and internationally.