"Falling Apart" Painting

Tamara Khodr is a Lebanese artist who comes from the Mount Lebanon region. She studied Business Administration (Finance) at the American University of Beirut (AUB), after which she completed a Master’s at Accademia del Lusso in Milan, mastering in Fashion Collection Management. Today, she lives and works in Dubai. A self-taught artist, Khodr draws on the stories she heard as a child of times gone by in her practice, melding personal memories with broader themes related to nostalgia, Lebanon’s rich heritage and also, looking forward, rebirth in the face of turmoil. The inevitability of change, from the challenges it presents to the rollercoaster of emotions that either prompt or accompany these shifts, are a focal point of her oeuvre. Khodr explores these ideas on several levels, ranging from the far-reaching evolution of humanity to her girlhood memories of life in Lebanon. Works in vibrant colours, in a palette she describes as “bold enough to raise courageous questions about the self”, Khodr presents us with compositions that encompass myriad aspects of Lebanese life and social constructs, from the past to the present and city scenes to rural ones. Her subjects are captured in everyday activities, hanging out washing and chatting across Lebanon’s iconic apartment balconies, talking over tea or relaxing in nature among the pine trees of Ras El Maten. However, Khodr gives her subjects’ faces a deconstructed aspect, suggesting there are many more layers to their emotions and thoughts behind the masks they present to others. Her practice reveals the profound influence that the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso has had on her work, resulting, notably, an interpretation of the cubist approach, from the different views she presents of her protagonists within the same form to the use of bold, bright colour for striking visual effect. Complex issues relating to Khodr’s relationship with her birth country - including its lengthy history of turmoil and conflict, and associated themes - find their way into her work, which she describes as “inner emotions [explored] in a home away from home”. Several of these topical aspects were to the fore in paintings featured at a recent show of Khodr’s work held at FLTRD Gallery, Dubai, titled ‘Identity Crisis’ (2023).