Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Waiting for the Barbarians, 2013, animated photog raphy, sound, multiple sources, HD video, 4 min 26 sec.
It is a collective platform of layered memories, fluid identities and contemporary Lebanese artistic practices.
Upon entering Circolo at 48 Via della Spiga in Milan, one's initial sense of wonder gives way to a multitude of questions. At the door, visitors are welcomed by Nicole Saikalis Bay, the venue's founder, patron, collector and architect. From 23 March to 3 July 2026, the group exhibition 'Shifting Crossroads: Beirut Contemporary' will bring together works by Catherine Cattaruzza, Simone Fattal, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Mona Hatoum, Lamia Joreige, Omar Mismar, Rabih Mroué, Stéphanie Saadé, Soraya Salwan Hammoud and Akram Zaatari.
What unfolds within the space is a city that never presents itself as a whole, but rather as a series of layers and tensions, where time does not move in a straight line, but accumulates, recedes and fractures. Drawings, textiles, videos, sculptures, photographs, natural materials and documents retrieved from various archives come together to create a dynamic cartography in which artistic
practices intertwine to form plural, often fragmented narratives that explore history and its accumulated layers. Beirut emerges not as a singular image, but as a field of tensions: a real city, and at the same time a symbolic space traversed by individual and collective memories, conflicts, losses, and possibilities for rewriting.
The works on display explore shifts, evocations and layers, offering a variety of perspectives that resist any attempt to define identity. In this sense, 'Shifting Crossroads: Beirut Contemporary' is an exercise in attentiveness, inviting us to reconsider how we read the world and to embrace uncertainty. Here, Beirut is not just a geographical reference point, but a critical concept that questions the present and maintains the potential for a shared space where all definitions are necessarily provisional.
Moving through the exhibition is therefore akin to moving through the city itself; every step reveals new traces and layers of meaning. Beirut emerges as a palimpsest city: a cultural crossroads where the past is still visible, but never definitive; where the present continues to create new narratives. It is a city of thresholds and unstable points that invite us to pause, observe and listen; a place where apparent fractures become opportunities to reinvent relationships and connections. In Waiting for the Barbarians (2013) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Beirut slowly comes into view. At first, everything seems still: empty streets, motionless buildings and hidden corners barely touched by light. Then, little by little, the layered images begin to stir. A detail emerges, a crack opens and a subtle movement suggests that the city is breathing and that time is suspended between expectation and possibility.
The voice of C. P. Cavafy, whose poem inspired the project, slips between the images. It connects the past with the present, evoking expectations that may never be realised. At the same time, it reveals unexpected beauty in hidden spaces. Each frame dissolves and reassembles, and every panorama becomes a palimpsest. Memory and the future overlap and transform one another, and Beirut emerges as a living organism — fragile yet powerful. This is not a linear story. It is a flow. It is a journey through fractures, tensions and small wonders. The images breathe, oscillating between stillness and movement. They invite viewers to move their gaze and feel the city pulsing beneath the surface. Every corner holds a fragment of memory, and every unexpected glimmer of light suggests a possibility. In this video, Hadjithomas & Joreige transform observation into experience: instability becomes perception and suspension becomes a space for contemplation. Beirut is not merely seen, it is felt. Within that waiting and that slow breath, a city emerges that can still surprise us. It remembers and invites us to walk through its stories, fragilities, and infinite possibilities.
Lamia Joreige, Uncertain Times – Fayçal, 2021, mixed media on paper, 150×80 cm.
Among the works that define Shifting Crossroads, Lamia Joreige’s Uncertain Times – Locusts (2021) stands out, exerting a quiet force akin to that of a pulsing memory. Created using ink, pastel and mixed media, the piece combines archival documents, handwritten notes and small drawings to piece together fragments of the turbulent period surrounding the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Lamia Joreige, Uncertain Times – Creation of a Nation 1, 2022, mixed media on paper, 34,5×25,5 cm. Lamia Joreige, Uncertain Times – Creation of a Nation 2, 2022, mixed media on paper, 34,5×26 cm.
Lamia Joreige, Uncertain Times – Creation of a Nation 5, 2022, mixed media on paper, 34,5×47 cm. Lamia Joreige, Uncertain Times – Creation of a Nation 6, 2022, mixed media on paper, 34,5×25,5 cm.
The Arab revolts, diplomatic shifts, and the locust invasion of 1915–1916 emerge as almost tangible presences, suspended between devastation and the possibility of rebirth. These events seem to breathe across time, pulsing in the present as though every sheet of paper, every note and every drawing held a memory waiting to be read. The marks on the paper oscillate between precision and impermanence: sharp lines mingle with delicate shades, while the locusts — symbols of fragility and destruction — traverse the surface like echoes of events that continue to reverberate in the present day. The intention is not to reconstruct history in a linear way, but rather to evoke its density and complexity, and to reveal the tension between chaos and the potential for connection. Each fragment and annotation becomes a point of contact between past and future, individual and collective memory. In this way, the viewer's gaze becomes an act of passage, moving through the folds of time and sensing the tensions, pauses, and unexpected moments of harmony woven into the historical fabric. Rupture is transformed into a threshold and destruction into the possibility of rebirth.
Lamia Joreige’s diverse collection of documents and drawings thus becomes a threshold space, where historical fractures are not seen as definitive breaks, but as places to inhabit, traverse and
understand. Each detail provokes contemplation on the endurance of uncertainty and the manner in which individual and collective memory interact with historical events. In this encounter between the past and the present, Uncertain Times offers a sensitive, poetic perspective — an invitation to view history not as a static archive, but as a living entity, a developing ecosystem capable of transforming vulnerability into opportunities for relationships, connections and continuity. Circolo also operates in this spirit, serving as a critical platform that questions conventional geographical and cultural coordinates. Milan emerges as a point of intersection — a temporary crossroads where Beirut is displaced, translated and reinvented. Crossing this threshold means more than just entering a space; it means accepting the need to reorient oneself and lose familiar maps, only to find them again in a transformed configuration of what is possible.
