Water in My Mouth

Water in My Mouth transforms Beirut Art Center’s rooftop into a site for artistic and social encounter. The title, drawn from the Arabic expression في فمي ماء, gestures toward what remains unsaid, the tensions, constraints, and unvoiced realities shaping life in the city. 

Conceived as a summer program, it brings together site-specific interventions, live ciné-concerts, and practical workshops. While not strictly about water, the program takes it as a starting point to think through questions of sustainability, maintenance, and infrastructural precarity in Beirut’s urban fabric. In a city where rooftops are largely occupied by water tanks, satellite dishes, and the residue of failed planning, Water in My Mouth reclaims this overlooked terrain as a provisional public space. Through gestures that merge artistic practice with everyday know-how, the program considers how states of liquidity, whether environmental, social, or emotional,  can open up spaces for resilience, interdependence, and reimagined forms of resource-sharing.

Water in My Mouth borrows its name, with permission, from an exhibition by Raymond Gemayel, a title that resonates with the broader themes of our summer program.

Artists and Practitioners

Anthony Sahyoun, Chehab Al Jassem, Elyse Tabet, Jad Atoui, Joseph Junior Sfeir, Joseph Kai, Lea Kayrouz, Mona Ayoub, Nathalie Harb, Nohyee El-Ard, Patrick Abi Abdallah, Ralph Chbeir, Raymond Gemayel, Rawad Kanj, Snakeskin (Julia Sabra, Fadi Tabbal), Taleb El Sajj, Wetsilhouette (Anthony Tawil, Claudia Khachan, Ziad Moukarzel)

Curated by Ibrahim Nehme and Joseph Kesrouany