When speaking about contemporary art in Beirut, one name inevitably comes up: Sfeir-Semler Gallery. For decades, it has remained one of the most influential spaces in the Middle East, working closely with artists from the region and engaging with themes of politics, memory, identity and social transformation.

And there is now just under a month left to see the exhibition of young Palestinian-Jordanian painter Bayan Kiwan at the gallery’s Beirut space.

So if you are based in the city (or planning a short weekend visit) and happen to pass by before the show closes, consider this your guide: through our lens, through Bayan’s own voice, and through the curatorial perspective shaping the exhibition.

Have you ever wondered how the galleries choose the artists they represent? How do they move beyond their existing roster — that already impressive list of names — and expand their borders?

We can’t speak for everyone. But with Sfeir-Semler Gallery, the answer is surprisingly simple: a date.

Not the kind you might imagine, of course — but their organised “Blind Date”: a group exhibition that invites artists from outside the gallery’s immediate circle to take part. These are artists whom Andrée Sfeir-Semler, the gallery’s founder, has followed over time — observing their practices closely before inviting those who genuinely pique her interest.

And it was in 2023 that she noticed Bayan and invited her to participate in that year’s “Blind Date” show.

Founded in the early 2000s, Sfeir-Semler Gallery has long focused on the art scenes of the Arab world, playing a pioneering role in introducing them to the international stage.

What sets the gallery apart is its commitment to working with artists who document the realities of the region — almost like writers chronicling the history we are living through. Their programme consistently supports practices that reflect, question and record social and political landscapes.

So the stars aligned. Three years after the 2023 “Blind Date” exhibition, Bayan returned to Beirut with her first solo show. Opening in January 2026, Intimate Trespasses takes its title from the exhibition’s central — and largest — painting.

At its core, the exhibition explores what happens inside our homes when everything outside feels heavy and unstable. There is a political undercurrent — in line with the gallery’s long-standing commitment to artists who document the realities of the region — yet Bayan approaches it from a quieter, more intimate perspective. These works do not depict the demonstration itself. There are no crowds, no shouting, no confrontation. Instead, they linger on what comes afterwards — the emotional residue once the noise has faded.

Two threads run through the exhibition.

1. Memory — both as something vague and as something physical

For Bayan, memory isn't neat or linear. We don't remember life as a straight, orderly story. Memories blur, overlap and layer over one another; past and present coexist. The overlapping composition of Intimate Trespasses, the central painting, reflects this. It isn't divided into separate scenes, but unfolds as layered fragments resting on top of each other.

Set in a Brooklyn apartment, the painting gathers multiple moments into a single shifting panorama. Time collapses. Fragments merge. It feels less like a fixed scene and more like the way memory actually behaves.

Memory is also held in the bodies of the figures Bayan paints. Folded postures, closed eyes, hands pressed gently to faces — these gestures suggest how events are absorbed physically. Memory becomes something we carry within us.

There is also something deeply personal in this exploration. All the figures depicted, as the artist explains, are her friends and loved ones. In that sense, the work feels not only like a reflection on collective experience, but also like an immersion into her own memory — an attempt to hold it, examine it, and perhaps better understand it.

2. The contrast between space and emotion

The domestic setting plays a crucial role. Warm tones — pinks, soft reds, muted yellows — create a sense of tenderness, even sensuality. And yet the people within these spaces appear exhausted and quietly overwhelmed.

This contrast reveals the protective quality of these interiors. Domestic spaces become small islands — brief opportunities to sit with and reckon with grief and rage. But the outside world doesn't remain at the threshold; it spills into the most intimate details of private and interpersonal life.

It is precisely this tension that gives the works their weight. Although the faces seem exhausted and the bodies folded inward, the atmosphere itself suggests something steadier — love, in its quiet strength, guiding us through grief, vulnerability and loss.

We can expect the largest works to carry the main conceptual weight of an exhibition. Here, however, the ceramics are just as significant.

While the paintings present layered scenes and overlapping memories, the ceramic pieces focus on fragments — faces, arms, hands. They bring the viewer closer, narrowing the gaze.

What makes them particularly powerful is the way they are produced. Kiwan folds the clay, fires it, paints it, and then fires it again. During this second firing, the heat of the kiln melts the paint and allows the glaze to drip. The contours soften. The faces blur. The forms shift. The works are permanently altered by the process.

This transformation reflects the core ideas running through the exhibition. Memory reshapes experience. Political events leave marks. The figures in the paintings absorb what surrounds them physically — and the ceramics undergo that physical transformation quite literally.

If the paintings articulate the theory, the ceramics almost embody the proof. They materialise what the exhibition proposes.