Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh channels decades of her country's pain into her work, responding to a history of war and displacement that continues to shape lives across West Asia.
Amid the US-Israel war on Iran, which has had an impact on the wider region, and Israel's invasion of Lebanon , she has been declining travel invitations.
"My heart is too broken to make any move at this moment," she told The New Arab. Ironically, her drawings and installations often explore themes of displacement and the human toll of war. "In the current world, many of us are already, or will soon be, displaced," she said, reflecting on the persistent struggles around her.
"It is hard for many to stay safe or sane amid the fires of war," she added. This multidisciplinary approach began in her childhood. "I was always working in the arts, from a very young age," Mounira shared. Her current exhibition in Bristol, with A Land as Big as Her Skin , brings together an expansive body of work — spanning drawings, paintings, installations, film, and sound — all rooted in historical and mythological narratives.
Through these varied forms, Mounira playfully yet poignantly reminds us that themes of migration, gender inequality, and conflict remain as urgent today as they were thousands of years ago in the region — a continuity most powerfully embodied in the exhibition's central installation.
Originally conceived for the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht in 2025, the exhibition will travel onwards to the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2027, extending its dialogue across geographies.
As Gemma Brace , curator at the Arnolfini art centre in Bristol, noted during the exhibition preview, many of the works emerge from Mounira's deep engagement with ancestral homelands and Lebanon's rich cultural heritage, rooted in the stories and mythology of the ancient Phoenician civilisation.
The main installation Gemma refers to, A Dance with Her Myth, occupies the ground floor gallery and was selected to represent Lebanon at the Venice Biennale in 2024. At its core is the story of Princess Europa — a figure from Greek mythology whose tale forges an unexpected link between ancient Lebanon and the European continent as we know it today.
But as Gemma explains, the work reaches far beyond a single myth. It weaves together multiple narratives — from the subjugation of women to the realities of displacement — drawing attention to those forced to flee their homelands.
In response to her own experiences of war, trauma and the lingering weight of memory, Mounira offers something strikingly tender: beauty.
Through layered drawings, paintings, film, music and sculptural materials, her installations hold space for dance, femininity and even moments of joy, creating a quiet but powerful counterpoint to the darkness that shaped them. A Levantine anchoring Born in Beirut in 1978 to a Lebanese father and a Syrian mother, Mounira grew up during Lebanon's civil war . She studied painting at the Lebanese University before, as she puts it, "looking to other horizons" — driven by a desire to leave and better understand herself.
Art, however, had always been a constant. "I was always working in the arts, from a very young age," she says. "I distributed journals with drawings, did theatre, acting, and music."
She later studied at the Lebanese Conservatory — at the time the only public institution for music education — where she played the double bass and performed in a band with friends, experimenting across multiple instruments.
Despite the war, Mounira and her parents chose to stay in Lebanon. But its impact was deeply felt. "Every time I made friends, their houses would be bombed, then they would leave, and that created a deep vacuum in me," she recalls. "If I really clicked with someone, the war would split us apart."
At 24, she decided to pursue art more seriously and, like many of her peers, looked abroad. "All those who studied with me went to study outside," she says. "We all did — even generations before us."
While many headed to Paris, aided by their French-language education, Mounira had no such ties. "As a Lebanese, it's not easy to travel. You need a visa, and if you get it, you face a thousand questions. The whole process was terrifying."
After completing her studies in Beirut, she spent a year working and reflecting, holding her first exhibitions but quickly encountering limitations — particularly as a young woman artist. A turning point came through family: her brother, who had moved to Egypt and later to the Netherlands, offered her a way out. What began as a visit turned into something more permanent.
Following a complex visa and admissions process, Mounira went on to study Fine Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, before completing a fellowship at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
Today, she lives and works between Beirut and Amsterdam — a life shaped, like her art, by movement, memory and the search for belonging. From Phoenician inspirations to universal feminist themes In recent years, Mounira has received growing international success: been nominated for the Artes Mundi 10 prize, won the ABN AMRO Art Award in 2023, and represented Lebanon at the Venice Biennale in 2024.
Her work navigates themes including identity, migration, trauma, inequality and gender, and is defined by a love of craftsmanship, utilising multiple materials. The Arnolfini show is one of her first in the UK. A Dance With Her Myth comprises a life-size boat skeleton, film, paintings, drawings and masks, exploring the story of Phoenician Princess Europa. This installation is shown here alongside new works, including Elissa's Room and Europa's Bedroom , exploring the fortunes of Princesses Elissa and Europa through a modern lens. They include new drawings, textiles, film, painting, and ceramics, inspired by her deep-rooted interest in stories from the past, folklore and mythology, her own war-torn upbringing, and Lebanese and Syrian cultures.
Elissa, a Phoenician princess, is considered the founder of Carthage , in North Africa, now in Tunisia. Also known as Dido in Greek and Roman mythology, Mounira wanted to retell her story and give her back her agency and a powerful ending. Fleeing danger at home, she managed to create an entirely new city and to enrich it.
"Elissa was a witty woman, beautiful. Carthage became very successful thanks to her, according to the myths," Mounira says. But the story also says that the Punic King of the wider North African region, who had first let her prosper, fascinated by her charisma and power, returned to threaten Elissa: "Either you marry me, or I'll destroy your Carthage," Mounira retells. "To preserve her people in Carthage, she said yes, then, before the wedding, she commits suicide, because she wants to be faithful to her deceased husband."
In contrast to Virgil's Aeneid, where Dido's suicide is framed as tragic and weak, Mounira's Elissa reclaims agency.
Her exhibition also offers more work, including installations, paintings, films, and textile works that reflect on the power of alphabets and languages.
Meanwhile, Mounira is already dreaming of new artworks, as if to conjure the ever-growing suffering inflicted on her beloved region.
"Now I have the ambition to make a film with Elissa's story, the way I did for Europa," she reveals. A film that indeed offers beauty and peacefulness, instead of only the cruel story of rape and abduction, imposed by Zeus on Europa. And this way, Mounira empowers viewers to also dream of more joyful or glorious endings. Melissa Chemam is a French Algerian freelance journalist and culture writer based between Paris, Bristol and Marseille, and travelling beyond Follow her on X: @melissachemam