Mounira Al Solh
Born:
Lebanon
Lives in:
Netherlands and Lebanon
Location
- Blouza Hall, Granville
- Campbelltown Arts Centre
Mounira Al Solh is an artist whose practice spans installation, painting, sculpture, video, drawing, text, embroidery, and performative gestures. Through micro-history and mythological storytelling, her work engages with equality and anti-colonial discourse, bearing witness to the impact of conflict and displacement. Al Solh’s work is socio-politically engaged while being poetically escapist at the same time. Her practice utilises oral documentation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and wordplay to explore themes of memory and loss. Motivated by acts of sharing and storytelling, change, and resistance, Al Solh strives to craft a sensory language that transcends nationality and creed.
Mounira Al Solh, I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous, 2012–ongoing. Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Mondriaan Fund and generous assistance from Knights Family Jabula Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg © Mounira Al Solh. Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, Campbelltown Arts Centre. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Mounira Al Solh, I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous, 2012–ongoing. Presentation at the 25th Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Mondriaan Fund and generous assistance from Knights Family Jabula Foundation. Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg © Mounira Al Solh. Installation view, 25th Biennale of Sydney, Rememory, 2026, Campbelltown Arts Centre. Photograph: Silversalt Photography.
Mounira Al Solh
Born 1978, Lebanon
Lives and works between Netherlands and Lebanon
I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous 2012 – ongoing
ink, watercolour and graphite on yellow legal pad paper
Presentation at the Biennale of Sydney was made possible by Rubaiya Qatar, Qatar Museums with generous support from Mondriaan Fund and generous assistance from Knights Family Jabula Foundation
Special acknowledgement to Arts and Cultural Exchange (ACE) and PYT Fairfield for supporting the drawing sessions Courtesy of the artist and Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut/Hamburg
Mounira Al Solh’s ongoing series I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous collects histories and personal experiences that continue to emerge from the humanitarian and political crises in Syria and SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa). Beginning shortly after the civil uprising in Syria in 2011, each drawing from the series documents – and is made during – a conversation between Al Solh and an individual, couple, or family, who was forcibly displaced.
Taking its title from a 2002 interview with Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, I Strongly Believe in Our Right to Be Frivolous combines pen, text and pencil drawings with quotes from, and notes on, each subject’s story; emphasising the human individual behind the increasingly de-sensitised “refugee” label. Presented predominantly on yellow legal paper, the works are reminiscent of the often laborious and rigid processes of immigration. Al Solh has continued the series in Australia with new drawings made during encounters with the Lebanese and Arab diaspora across Sydney.
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