Historian Researcher | Artist filmmaker | Cultural Worker | Virtual and Augmented Reality Developper
Treasures are best kept when distributed, when possible I will put my sources and archives online.
Born in Doha – Qatar, to a Syrian mother and a Lebanese father. I spend my primary in Beirut, my secondary in Montreal, and from university onwards between Beirut and Paris, with a few years dispatched between Alexandria, Istanbul, Tourcoing, and Cannes.
I dragged my researchers’ suitcase in humanities and social sciences to the world of art and cinema first via the Fresnoy, National Studio for Contemporary Arts.
2017 pivotal year. I wrote and produced “What Happens to a Displaced Ant”, a 42-minute poetic essay. I took part in the Lebanon Factory program, opening the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, and moved to Lebanon to produce my first feature film with a solo exhibition.
2019 rupture year. After understanding at the Cannes XR market that virtual and augmented reality is what I needed in narratives and storytelling, the revolution in Lebanon, the economic collapse, the pandemic and the explosion, stirred up the cards again. I work, among other things, with “Workers of Art and Culture”, a group born from the revolution.
2021, I return to Montreal to join my family and immediately embark on the virtual and augmented reality program of the Grasset Institute.
In my work I use history for its collective memory, music for its dionysian effect and animation for its distanced witt. Thematically, exile and disembodiment are omnipresent elements, love and resilience a constant concern.
