Exhibition: Ayman El Iskandarani & Lara Saab
Exhibition Dates: February 28 – April 30, 2026
Location: Ashkal Alwan
In Beirut, more often than not, the grid trembles out of sequence: infrastructures falter and crumble, abandoned plots interrupt the urban fabric, electricity flows in unstable currents, and memory and labor slip out of view. Artists Ayman El Iskandarani and Lara Saab meet within this fragile terrain, with each proposing an inquiry into how extraction and depletion shape what is kept, what is abandoned, and what slowly becomes invisible over time.
El Iskandarani’s installation makes use of crocheted fabrics and electrical wires, weaving seemingly unrelated material together to point at the domestic and urban arrangements that require constant maintenance. Saab’s project turns to the feral maguey plants blossoming across Lebanon and traces how a species that arrived as an ornamental object came to flourish in spaces that have fallen into disuse.
By foregrounding the hidden energies and forgotten labor that structure our homes and city, the two projects reveal how extraction operates across scales and invite us to reflect on how care persists within conditions of depletion, as we imagine our surroundings anew.
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