Artist Nadia Saikali surrounded by her paintings in her Paris studio. (Rights reserved)
Nadia Saikali's studio residence in Le Bateau Lavoir, a Paris artists' studio residence designed by her late husband, interior designer Henri Gaboriaud, is an ode to Lebanon. This is where she settled in 1979 to escape the war in Lebanon, and where she works tirelessly.
The artist in front of the door of her studio residence in Le Bateau Lavoir in Paris. (Rights reserved)
Humbly, somewhat isolated on her mound, Saikali didn't know that her paintings "Empreinte, autoportrait: rivage et renaissance" and "Nu de femme, temps immobile" were just included in Sotheby's auction, A love letter to Beirut, "Empreinte, autoportrait" sold for 38,100 pounds (GBP) and in 2022 and 2023, two of her paintings, "Vertical" and "Paysage de montagne" sold for 38,100 GBP and 35,280 GBP respectively at Sotheby's.
Represented by the Parisian gallery Claude Lemand, she is one of the veterans of the last century's Lebanese painting scene and its artistic avant-garde. Her paintings have toured the world: France, Brazil, Iran, the United States, England and others. Her creations are in leading public and private collections, such as the Barjeel Foundation, the Fonds national d'art contemporain, the Fonds de la Ville de Paris and the Royal Institute Galleries in London. In Lebanon, her work is in the Sursock Museum, the Nadia Tueni Foundation and the Ministry of Culture, whose collection is now managed by BEMA.
This child who looks at the sea
An old invitation card from an exhibition entitled "Salah Stétié et les peintres" and a card from Ghassan Tueni's funeral liturgy with his photo (she is working on a portrait commissioned by the family) sat on an armchair. Several canvases she was working on simultaneously were propped on easels.
There was an old canvas damaged in transport that she was restoring, another she was up-cycling for new work (a gift for the family) and three or four more that captivate the eye, like the one with this child looking out at the sea, Saikali's passion.
Among these are portraits were works of abstraction that has characterized her art and what she calls "lumino-kinetism," a combination of movement and light drawing on strata and color, imprints that distinguished her work at one point.
She begins with handprints then footprints,: The body's extremities, the most innervated and delicate, speak to our singularity, our way of touching the world. "Prints come from a long way back, from my childhood and adolescence," she said. "It comes from classical ballet perhaps. I wanted to dance on canvas; I did a lot of rhythmic dance as a child." She listed these impressions' origins: "The Sporting Club, the sand and beach of Beirut, summers spent by the sea in Jnah and the imprint of my feet in the sand, diving ... I close my eyes and see Jnah."
"All this comes from a cocktail in my memory," she said, as does lumino-kinetism, which she says was originally inspired "by the Christmas tree, flashing lights and nativity scenes" which "represent the earth." The artist is interested in geology, geography and ancient civilizations, spaces with poetics, which is also one of her trademarks.
Nadia Saikali's abstract art. (Credit: Courtesy of the artist)
Her vision of Lebanon is also poetic. She repeated as if in an incantation: "I love all the Lebanese, I love the Lebanese very much. More than anything, I'm Lebanese after all ... They live out their differences in Lebanon; we grew up that way, with a very broad mindset; it's not the same here."
"I love Beirut, I love the Mediterranean ... The sunsets were very beautiful, but that doesn't mean they won't continue," she said, as if speaking to herself. Despite decades of living under the gray skies of Paris, it is the fervent light of the Mediterranean that permeates all her work.
Saikali's artistic exploration is born of memory, both personal and ancestral. "I'm a researcher," she said. She also credited her Phoenician heritage: "They were navigators, explorers; they travelled the Mediterranean and were the creators of the first alphabet, the phonetic alphabet." Like them, she ventures to create her own language, a language that is primal, universal, free from time and environment and diverse.
A still life painted by Nadia Saikali. (Credit: Courtesy of the artist)
Exploration does not come without movement, slowness and listening to the inner world. Saikali immerses herself in the joy of body and movement, of music, and often returns to these components as a source of inspiration for her work, refuting intellectualist explanations. Music, dance, ballet, swimming, the sea, her father and the "welcoming" nature of Lebanon, its light and its seasons, are recurring themes in her work. Her compositions especially stem from music: "I love music; I consider colors to be like musical notes.
While some art critics and academics gloss over her art and emphasize its spirituality, she said: "For me, painting is simply sensuality." Indeed, as a young graduate, the painter quickly detached herself from conventional representations, art history and all theories, and later encouraged her students (such as Jamil Molaeb and Chaouki Chamoun) at ALBA and the Lebanese University where she taught for a time to find their own language.
She said she still has vivid memories of her years teaching in Lebanon: "It brought me great joy to live with a crowd of attentive young people who carried a lot of hope for the future in their hearts,"she said. Her former students also remember her with respect and admiration: "She was spontaneous and self-confident. That's why her art is never static. It's a reflection of her life," said Moaleb.
Saikali's signature is to engram the living, the deep, inner movement of the body and luminosity. A signature matured in the slowness and solitude that the artist says she cultivates: "I like solitude. It allows you to fly away and dream. It provokes the imagination. There are no distractions. For me, art is sacred, it's like a prayer, it's just as precious, just as important. When I go to a museum and there are three-dimensional relics, there's a part of the artist's being that shines through."
As our interview ended, the artist repeated how much she misses Lebanon: "I miss Lebanon so much. It's this great myth: The sea, the light... There's everything in Lebanon: The pines, the fir trees, the sea, the shellfish, the oysters we used to eat, such welcoming nature."
When we asked, "Why don't you go and spend some time there?" Saikali said, "It's a question of budget and time, but above all I'm scared, because I know I'll have to come back here. I'm afraid of the uproar that would cause. So I'd rather not go."
This article was originally published in L'Orient-Le Jour.
