Nabil Nahas to Represent Lebanon at 2026 Venice Biennale

Lebanese American artist Nabil Nahas, known for his vivid textured paintings of fractal, geometric patterns incorporating organic elements such as seashells and starfish, has been chosen to represent Lebanon at the Sixty-First Venice Biennale, to take place May 9–November 22, 2026. News of his participation was announced by Dubai-based gallery Lawrie Shabibi. The pavilion is commissioned by the nonprofit Lebanese Visual Art Association, of Paris, and by French curator Nada Ghandour. The commissioners in a statement lauded Nahas for his “intricate relationships between nature, geometry, and the cosmos” in a “visual language that seamlessly blends abstraction and figuration,” while the selection committee praised him for offering a “poetic vision of the world” that “resonates with contemporary concerns while evoking both the spiritual and the material, the intimate and the cosmic.”

Born in Beirut in 1949, Nahas spent his youth there and in Cairo before moving to the United States in 1969 to study. After earning his BFA from Louisiana State University and his MFA from Yale, he moved to New York and began dividing his time between the city and the Hamptons. He returned to Lebanon for a visit in 1993, in the wake of the Lebanese Civil War, and now works between Beirut and New York. His work typically blends the sensibilities of traditional Islamic art with those of American Abstract Expressionism. Trees, such as olive, cedar, and pine, that are native to Lebanon are a favorite motif; Levantine art and architecture is another. Nahas represented Lebanon in the 2002 Bienal de São Paulo. His art is held in the collections of institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.