Born in Beirut – Lebanon, Rania Stephan graduated in Cinema Studies from Latrobe University Melbourne- Australia and Paris VIII University- France. Her career in film has been long and diverse. She has worked as first assistant with renowned filmmakers, as well as camera person and editor with researchers in Social Sciences and Documentarists (Procession of The Captives, Waiting for Abu Zeid, Catherine or The Body of the Passion, Panoptic). She has directed short and medium length videos and creative documentaries. Anchored in the turbulent reality of her country, her documentaries give a personal perspective to political events. She intertwines raw images with a poetic edge, where chance encounters are captured with compassion and humor. The work on archival material has been an underlying enquiry in her artistic work. Her most recent work investigates forgotten images and sounds that haunt the present. By juxtaposing them with new ones, she explores a diversity of meanings, triggering renewed narratives and emotions. Her artistic work explores how still and moving images collide and collude, multiply and subtract. Approaching images like an editor – part detective, part cinephile, she traces absence and remembrance, that are originary to those images. Her first feature film: The Three Disappearances of Soad Hosni (Artist’s Prize: Sharjah Biennale 10, 2011) received international acclaim and won many prizes.

Updated October 2020

Roy Dib, born in 1983, works and lives in Beirut. On both formal and conceptual levels, artist and filmmaker Roy Dib challenges common notions of space and boundary, weaving together archival material, scripted text and hypothetical circumstances to chronicle the political narratives of our day. His work was presented at Galerie Tanit (2018), MAXXI Museum (2017), Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), ALFILM (2017), JCC (2016), Forum Expanded – 64th and 65th Berlinale, Exposure 2015 – Beirut Art Center, Uppsala International Short Film Festival (2014), Queer Lisboa (2014), Images Festival (2016) – Toronto, Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil (2013, 2015 and 2017), Ashkal Alwan (2014) – Beirut, Video Works (2011 – 2014) – Beirut. Awards Teddy Award for Best Short Film – Berlinale 2014 Best First Film – Lebanese Film Festival 2014 Inntravel Award – Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival 2014 Best Short Film – Queer Lisboa 2014 Uppsala Grand Prix 2014 Best Film Award – Sicilia Queer FilmFest 2015 Special Mention – Palermo Pride, Sicilia Queer FilmFest Award, Sicily 2015 19th Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil / Southern Panoramas’ Award 2015 Special Mention – Network of Arab Alternative Screens – NAAS – JCC 2016

Updated October 2020

Joumana Asseily is the founder and owner of Marfa’ Gallery (https://marfaprojects.com), a contemporary art gallery in Beirut, Lebanon. Joumana studied art and architecture at Penninghen, Academie Julian in Paris. Since her return to Beirut in 2006, she has supported non-profit art organisations such as the Arab Image Foundation, Ashkal Alwan where she joined the committee board, and the Beirut Art Center with several shows.

Realizing that the blooming art scene in Lebanon was calling for new spaces dedicated to idea-based projects, Joumana decided in October 2015 to start from scratch and founded Marfa’ Gallery in Beirut. The gallery and its projects are built upon a desire of dialogue and collective thinking, the space is located in two garages in the customs area in the Marfa’ neighborhood, which means port in Arabic. In a short five years the gallery has done over 15 shows with 12 internationally recognized artists, and exhibited in many art fairs around the world such as Art Basel, Switzerland, Frieze London, Artissima, FIAC, and Paris Internationale.

Updated November 2020

Andrée Sfeir-Semler is an art historian who founded her eponymous gallery in Germany in 1985. Twenty
years later, in 2005, she opened a second gallery in Beirut, transforming a defunct factory into the first
white cube space in the Middle East. She studied History and History of Art & earned her PhD in 1980.
Sfeir-Semler Gallery has been mainly representing conceptual and minimal artists. Since 2003 the gallery
has focused on contemporary art from the Arab World and has been instrumental in launching and
developing the careers of numerous artists from the region like Etel Adnan, Walid Raad, Akram Zaatari,
Wael Shawky, Yto Barrada, Rabih Mroue & Rayyane Tabet to name a few.

Updated November 2020

Amira Solh is an urban planner based in Beirut, Lebanon. She studied Sociology at the American University of Beirut before earning a Masters of Regional Planning from Cornell University. Amira Solh began her career in rural development planning in various Arab countries and at the United Nations Development Program. She headed the Urban Planning Department at Solidere, the Lebanese company for the Development and Reconstruction of the Beirut Central District, until 2018. She is a founding Board Member of the Arab Center for Architecture in Beirut. She was a Fellow with the New Museum’s IdeasCity program in Arles, France. Amira Solh is now a cultural heritage and urban planning consultant. She currently lives between Beirut and Barcelona.

Updated November 2020