For Sara Chaar, 'wounds know the way home'

At the Art on 56th gallery, where she is presenting her latest series of paintings, Sara Chaar — delicate silhouette and Madonna-like translucent face — surprises when she reveals that she paints... with a trowel. "I don’t use brushes, but construction tools," explains this fragile young woman, who creates large abstract works by layering coats of oil paint mixed with cold wax. Each layer forms a “foundation” that she then incises with a box cutter, knife, or sometimes even a screwdriver, in a spontaneous impulse that seems to draw from her unconscious, shaped by her encounters with Beirut’s scarred walls.All of this artist’s creative process, who began painting as a self-taught artist in 2018, is built around a cycle of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, echoing the tumultuous history of the Lebanese capital. A...