To Make Another World Possible — With Art That Shakes People. Meet TAP

by Alexandra Mansilla

To Make Another World Possible — With Art That Shakes People. Meet TAP

22 Jun 2025

"Plastispheres", performance, by Yara Bustany. Photo: Yara Boustany

So, what exactly is TAP? Behind those three letters lies the Temporary Art Platform — a nonprofit based in Lebanon and France, dedicated to sparking social change through contemporary art. And despite the word “Temporary” in its name, TAP has actually been going strong for ten years now!

This year, from May 22 to 25, 2025, they celebrated their 10th anniversary with a special four-day program called “Breath is Tide.” The event was a collaboration between TAP and The Art Explora Festival, a travelling festival that creates free artistic and cultural experiences — onboard the world’s first museum boat, in pop-up exhibition pavilions on the quay, and through a live program connecting people and institutions across 15 Mediterranean countries, from 2024 to 2027.

Now, even though the Lebanese stopover of the Art Explora Festival’s museum-boat had to be postponed until 2027 because of the recent war, TAP still went ahead with its four-day program in Beirut. It was a gesture of solidarity with the local art community, and of course, a way to mark their big milestone.

Four days, different venues around the city, and a particularly powerful project at AUBMC (American University of Beirut Medical Centre): they unveiled contemporary artworks specially commissioned for the hospital — a project that actually started back in 2017 and is only just now being revealed.

So, what was it really like? How did it all come together, and who was involved? And what art does TAP stand behind? For all the details, we caught up with TAP’s founder, curator, and artistic director, Amanda Abi Khalil.

Amanda Abi Khalil: "'Breath is Tide' is a declaration: we breathe — and in breathing together, we resist. It is a reminder to breathe in breathlessness."

— Amanda, our conversation will focus on TAP and the Art Explora Festival — but first, I would love to ask about the TAP logo. Who designed it?

— It is Oficina de Disseny, a graphic design studio from Barcelona!

— Wow, I was honestly hoping you would say a kid made it! What is the story behind it?

— We do everything kind of homemade — there is this idea of a makeshift approach. We work with limited resources, so we wanted a logo that could easily help us brand our projects without much effort.

This logo plays with the idea of informality — the handwritten feel, something that is context-responsive and made on a whim.

A key aspect of that visual identity is the colour change. Every time you visit the website, it appears in a different shade. We actually have a palette of seven colours for tabs and visual elements that we rotate and play with.

And to build on that, the notion of play is a key part of our curatorial approach — whether it is hacking, experimenting with sites, or creatively shaping invitations. It all carries this spirit of spontaneity.

— I love it! So you founded it 10 years ago. Take me back to that time — what was it like back then?

— Back then, ten years ago, I was the curator of a contemporary art space in Beirut called the Hangar. There was a lot happening in the city — plenty of galleries and institutions — but very few independent spaces. And almost no one was really focusing on audience outreach, mediation, public art, or socially engaged practice.

From the start, the idea was to create a platform — an institution without a physical space. That is exactly what TAP became. The goal then, and still today, is to make another world possible — and help shape it by driving social change through contemporary art.

Over the years, we were tempted now and then to settle into one location, to gather around a base. But I am still fully convinced that not having a fixed space was the right decision. Especially considering the uncertainties we have faced — COVID, wars, economic crises — having a physical space might have made it impossible to keep going. And honestly, that kind of fixed model just isn’t the type of work I am drawn to.

— So, TAP stands for Temporary Art Platform — but why “temporary”?

— The idea is that we don’t follow a regular program or fixed schedule. The platform unfolds organically, depending on the moment. I always say we need four things: energy, desire, an invitation, and a need. When those don’t align, nothing happens.

That is why, some years, we have done just two projects, and other years, it has been twelve. But there has never been a year with nothing at all. It is really about letting the work emerge when the conditions are right — letting the platform unfold, rather than forcing it into a rigid structure.

— This year marks TAP’s 10th anniversary. Would you mind walking me through the journey a bit? What moments or milestones stand out the most for you?

— Over the years, the scale of our projects and the means of production have grown. That is partly because our network has expanded and we have been able to access more funding. But even so, the platform remains very small and entirely independent — no one is on payroll, and that precariousness is, in some ways, our strength.

We are a collective of curators and collaborators — everyone involved also teaches, consults, or works in other fields. But we share a strong commitment to the platform, and we all contribute to fundraising and building each project from the ground up.

If I had to name one key milestone after these ten years, it would be our positioning within the field of social practice and public art in the region — and doing so with a deep, lived understanding of the complexities and uncertainties curators face. Curating during times of crisis is never easy. Nor is curating outside traditional institutions. But that very flexibility — that willingness to adapt and respond — has become both our strength and our know-how.

I am really proud of what we have done over the last decade. We have had some amazing collaborations, both small and large. Most recently, we inaugurated a permanent public art commission for a hospital — the first of its kind in the region. We have experimented with radical formats: interventions in newspapers, commissions installed in car washes, pharmacies, parking lots, rooftops, and even swimming pools. That kind of work requires a completely different skill set — one not typically developed within formal institutions.

Although we never wanted to settle on a fixed “method,” we now recognise certain recurring approaches. For example, we often use curating as a form of hacking, and hacking as a curatorial method. We have grown more comfortable embracing that.

Another recurring idea in our practice is how we approach scale. We are not working at the scale of representation — we are interested in the one-to-one. In how art operates on the scale of real life, of direct contact, of public space and city environments. That is something we have come to see as defining who we are.

— How would you describe the kind of art that TAP stands behind?

— It is about intervention. It is about disruption, about triggering something, shaking people out of their comfort zones.

Personally, I think we gain more from art that disturbs, provokes, surprises, or even annoys us than from art that simply tries to soothe.

Projects from different years: "Works on Paper", is a series of artist interventions in four Lebanese newspapers, 2016 (Annabel Daou: The Daily Star); Burj El Hawa, Temporary installation on Burj El Murr, 2018, by Jad El Khoury; "How long is the coast of Lebanon?", poster installation and performance, 2023, by Monica Basbous

— This year, TAP collaborated with the Art Explora Festival. Although the museum-boat’s stop in Beirut was postponed to 2027 due to the war, the program still took place across several locations in the city, right?

— Yes, we convinced Art Explora to still hold a pre-festival and maintain their commitment to the Lebanese art scene, especially now, when support is so urgently needed. So we created a parallel program in Beirut — a gesture of solidarity — and aligned it with TAP’s 10-year anniversary celebration, which we titled Breath is Tide.

It was a four-day citywide program exploring the theme of breath. The inspiration came from what so many people in Beirut say these days: "We can’t breathe.” It resonates on many levels — socially, environmentally, and politically. There is the literal air pollution, the aftermath of the port explosion, the presence of ammonium nitrate in the atmosphere, and the toxic air we rarely even discuss. I have lost family members to lung cancer in the past year, and we know that Beirut is seeing a rise in such illnesses.

But breath also became a shared symbol during the pandemic. We learned that even breathing is not neutral — our breath connects us, but can also become a threat to others. That duality really moved me. So Breath Is Tide became an exploration of breath as both a metaphor and a lived experience, across various practices, places, and politics.

Tamara Al Samerraei, "Untitled", 2018

We also used this moment to unveil an eight-year-long collaboration with AUBMC — the American University of Beirut Medical Centre — where we inaugurated six permanent, site-specific art commissions for the hospital. That was the heart of the programme.

Hatem Imam, "Perspicere", 2018

— The program spanned public spaces like Karantina Public Park and the Beirut RiverLESS Forest, as well as cultural venues including Beirut Art Centre, the Sursock Museum, the National Library, Metropolis, and Metro Al Madina. What made you pick these locations?

— By the way, we held programs inside established cultural venues like the Beirut Art Centre and Metropolis for the first time (although we had collaborated with them before in different formats). That was intentional: to highlight how, quite literally, we breathe with each other. These shared spaces of culture and expression became symbolic breathing rooms within the city.

At the same time, we remained committed to reaching wider, younger audiences. One highlight was our project in the Karantina Play Garden, which had been closed to the public. We lobbied for its reopening and refurbishing in time for the festival, and we opened it for teenagers. We also hosted a moving performance, “A Room Without Walls”, by Ghida Hachicho for children.

Ghida Hachicho, Alejandro Ahmed and Eisa Jocson, LIGNA, dance performance, "A Room Without Walls", 2025

Another meaningful moment was our event at the National Library, held in celebration of its reopening. For me, that space also represents a kind of breath in the city — a space for thought, quiet, reflection. That idea of libraries, parks, and art venues as literal and metaphorical breathing spaces was at the heart of this program.

We also returned to the riverside forest we helped plant a few years ago. Revisiting the site and seeing how the trees had grown was deeply symbolic — a meditation on interconnection, on resilience, and how nature teaches us to breathe again. In fact, we had previously built an entire 2021 program around this same forest, exploring themes of trees, mycelium, mushrooms, and the river.

One of the most unique commissions this year came from artist Ahmad Ghossein. He turned a shared taxi ride — a service — into a living, breathing artwork. He simply placed a camera inside the car and captured passengers as they came and went: chatting about their day, commenting on politics, swapping recipes, laughing, listening to music. For two full days, he drove around letting the city speak for itself. That ride became a moving portrait of Beirut’s pulse, its rhythm, its everyday breath.

Ahmad Ghossein, durational performance (Livestream), "Service Servissen: One Ride, Two Rides. Perhaps Words Ease the Burden", 2025

— What is next for TAP?

— Hopefully, we have a bigger edition coming up in 2027 through our continued collaboration with Art Explora. We will be unveiling a new series of billboard commissions in the next months in collaboration with BeMA — something we have done before in Beirut. We have already commissioned 10 contemporary artists to take over billboards across the city, and this fall we are planning to add a few more.

Yasmina Hilal’s billboard intervention, 2024. Photo: Tamara Saadé

But the most exciting new chapter for us is focused on very young children — ages zero to three. We are starting a series of commissions for nurseries, where we are inviting contemporary artists to design one-to-one scale furniture and site-specific works tailored for these spaces.

Just a few days ago, we also kicked off a new project in Rio de Janeiro in partnership with the Goethe-Institut and the French Institute. It is part of our ongoing Art, Ecology, and the Commons series. We have welcomed three artists who will be in residence for three months, and their work will culminate in a public intervention this September in one of the most beautiful parks in Rio, this is the third edition or iteration of Ar Livre Arte Livre.

by Alexandra Mansilla