Beirut last houses-Gemmayze Print

Lara Youakim works were first mostly influenced by women and Asia. Since her return to the country (Lebanon), and shocked by the huge, fast and chaotic changes of Beirut, she started to work on that theme. She denounces the duality life/ loss and death of the soul of Beirut (knowing that happens in all cities of the world). Living in a traditional old Beirut house makes it harder for her to accept the exaggerate modernization of the city, not taking in consideration its people or historical interest of the, unfortunately, disappearing old Beirut. Besides, even though a certain number of buildings are beautiful, most of the time they don’t fit in their location because of the lack of urbanism. Two other important themes are people as they are the essence of the soul of a city and trees which are synonym of life.