Freedom Recalled is a landmark exhibition at Beit Beirut which confronts Lebanon’s unresolved history of impunity, the failures of justice and the unhealed wounds that continue to echo through its collective psyche. At its heart, Freedom Recalled asks: Do we bear a responsibility to remember — and if so, how? What silences do we choose to uphold, and what price must truth exact in return? And ultimately, how might the pursuit of justice become a catalyst for personal healing and national renewal?

Justice vs. Impunity – Memory vs Amnesia – Individual Trauma vs. Collective Healing

Freedom Recalled arises from this landscape of polarized tensions — fragile, shifting, unresolved. Its title evokes the uneasy bond between remembrance and liberation: to recall freedom is to summon what was once lived or imagined, yet also to confront the disquieting sense that freedom itself has been rescinded, withdrawn as though no longer sanctioned. The exhibition brings together 40 artists who transform memory and the intergenerational scars of Lebanon’s traumatic events since 1975 up until the Beirut Port Explosion, into images, forms, and gestures that refuse erasure, challenge complacencies, and heed the murmurs of the past to clear a path toward another future.

Follow the green line

During the war, the Green Line marked the separation between East and West Beirut: a boundary of fear, a scar etched into the city, an open wound that cut through lives and neighborhoods alike. Today, we trace it anew, reimagined as a green line of trees. It grows, breathes, and remembers. It carries the memory of rupture, yet whispers of healing. Each tree stands as a testament to resilience, and together they form a living archive of what has been endured and what may yet be transformed. The Green Line of trees invites us to feel this pulse, where the individual and collective converge. It will guide your visit and invite you to turn the invisible scars woven into our shared fabric into threads of a communal tapestry of growth and freedom.

Participants: Abdallah Kassem & Cathy Jardon, Ahmad Baydoun, Anna Ogden-Smith, Ara Azad, Bernard Khoury, Chérine Yazbeck, Christine Safatly, Baal creations: Claudia Chahine & Gilbert Debs, Cybelle Moutran, Frederic Imbert, Georges Haddad, Gregory Buchakjian & Valerie Cachard, Hadi Zaccak, Cloud Pulse, Hala Mouzannar, Hassan Idriss, Jad Khoury, Jean Boghossian, Joanna Andraos, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Karen Chekerjian, Karine Wehbe, Lamia Joreige, Lana Daher & Qutaiba Barhamji, Merlin Ferret, Michel Tabet, Moses Magharian, Nasri Sayegh, Nayla Romanos, Oliver de Gem, Petra Serhal, Philippe Aractingi, Yaraqa: Romy Assouad, Sabah Haider, Silat for Culture: Maya & Asaad, Simon Berger, Soha Ghandour, Safran du Liban, For The Art association.

Curator: Annie Vartivarian

Scenography: Yasmina Wakim

Text: Zena Wakim

Team: Alya Jreij, Christine Safatly, Emmy Snickars, Rouane Wakim, Sarah Ghanimeh, Valérie Sfeir.

Visual Identity: Bananamonkey.

Invited by: Hkeeli

Acnowledgments: H.E. Ghassan Salamé; Embassy of Switzerland in Lebanon; Elias Moukheiber Institute for Lebanon; Raja Blanco; Saadallah & Loubna Khalil Foundation; Beirut Art Center; Exotica; EYE SEE Experience, Sursock Museum; Skaff; Château St Thomas; Arak Touma; LIA Assurex Acknowledgments: Mohammad Al-Hammoud; Dr Barbara Polla, Joelle Hajjar, Naggiar; L’Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO), Lebanon.