If I were to be unstoppable, I would lead myself to destruction.
I am stoppable.
Recent events forced me to pause. My projects slowed, plans dissolved, and what felt like interruption turned out to be a direction. It is in moments of stagnation, while the world accelerates, that clarity can emerge. This is where the author in me stepped ahead. I did not want to be seen, observed or heard, but to be read and understood. In times when speed and automation dominate expression, I am choosing slowness.
Over the past months I moved through a period of limitation and adjustment. Momentum simply shifted. At first I questioned whether change might blur my sense of self. Instead it sharpened it. The creative instinct resurfaced. In that space I asked myself a simple question: if everything can shift without warning, what remains essential?
The answer came without hesitation. I missed the process of preparing a work, thinking toward an exhibition, allowing ideas to take form. I missed the sea. I missed the people who I care the most about.
Naturally, Beirut was on my mind. I returned mentally to my recent exhibition GRWM at Takeover last Summer/Fall. That experience marked me, it was there that I encountered an audience that did not rush the work but engaged with it attentively, almost instinctively. The exchange felt immediate and sincere leaving a lasting impression.
As weeks passed, I kept circling back to Beirut not as nostalgia but as projection. The idea of future collaborations there became a point of focus. That late summer allowed me to experience places shaped as much by people as by circumstances. Moving from Abdel Wahab Street towards downtown, overlooking the Lebanese Army naval bases. lies NOCK -aka no chef in the kitchen. Founded by Christine Abi Azar, the space resists easy categorisation. It does not dictate how art should be approached. Instead, it allows encounters to unfold organically. What stood out to me was not only the physical structure suspended across the upper floors of an early 1960’s building that survived the civil war, but the way artistic practices coexist there without hierarchy, without prescription. It felt alive, responsive and open. So much like Beirut and its people.
Just uphill from NOCK lies nomadutopia, founded by Marie-Mathilde Jaber. Set within a historic sandstone house on Gemmayzeh Street, the space carries a raw honesty. It does not polish what it represents. Instead, it offers room for emerging as well as established voices to assert themselves fully without compromise. There I had the chance to immerse myself in Petra Serhal’s Sihr, an experience I carried with me through this existing harsh German winter.
From Beirut, the journey continued to Mount Sannine where I joined an art residency at Terrapods. Founded by Joslin Faith Kehdy, the experience extended beyond artistic or material experimentation and production. It was shaped by land, rhythm, shared labour and exchange: among artists, animals, and the surrounding environment. Living and working within the ancient apple trees terraces of Mount Lebanon shifted my understanding of time, presence and collaboration. It left a deep and lasting imprint.
Holding onto these recent experiences became a way for me to stay oriented. They reminded me that work continues even when it transforms. That creation does not always announce itself loudly, sometimes it reorganizes quietly.
During this period I began looking at my existing work differently. I revisited my archive not as a closed body of production but as a living one. Questions of circulation, custodianship/ownership and continuity surfaced: Who holds the work? How does it travel? What kinds of interpretive frameworks accompany it as it moves beyond my immediate authorship?
This line of questioning brought me back to a series of self portraits. I produced between 2021 and 2022.
Work that I had never shown publicly and whose mode of appearance remained unresolved. I thought about a remark Pola once made to me over the phone. She said, “If you want to show the work, then show it unapologetically to the world.”
It was within this shift, that Pola Sieverding came to my mind. As a dear friend and former professor, she has long shaped and understood my lens-based practice from the inside. The wish to trust her with the curatorial custodianship of the self portrait photography series emerged as a logical extension of this thinking grounded in shared history, critical alignment and trust.
Alongside this reflection, I immersed myself in research on parallel economies in the art world. I was drawn to models that resist speculation and instead prioritize exchange, commitment and shared authorship. Among them the story of the Vogels stood out. Their obsessed way of collecting, guided by curiosity rather than reputation, felt both radical and pragmatic. They reminded us that value does not need external validation to exist.
This brings me to the invitation at the heart of this text.
As part of an ongoing research on alternative art economies, I am opening my practice to exchange.
If you are an artist, you are invited to propose a work from your own collection that you are open to exchanging.
You can send me an email with images, medium, size and a short description of the work . In return, I will suggest a Work of mine and together we can figure out how to make the exchange happen logistically anywhere in the world.
If you are not an artist and you are drawn to a specific Work of mine whether seen on my website or on IG or even you would just like to acquire a Work of mine. You are welcome to propose an exchange as well. This could be a service, an amount or a creative experience you feel holds value. I am open to non-ordinary propositions. This is not about rejecting the existing market. It’s about reclaiming agency.
We can choose to shape our own economies, define our own rules and actively participate in how value is constructed around our work, rather than simply allowing systems to do it for us.
By the way, the Vogels once acquired a work by Christo and Jeanne-Claude by cat sitting their cat Gladys 😉
©️ Abir Kobeissi 2026
abirkobeissi.com 