Lily Abichahine

Lily Abichahine (b. 1985) is an artist based in Beirut and Paris who works in lecture-performance, performance, installation and video. Her subjects are where art and law meet, the body, Greek mythology, migration and urban memory. She describes herself as a lawyer, researcher and artist. Her lecture-performances set legal problems against invented stories.

Exquisite Corpse (2021), first staged at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, follows a family quarrel over mummifying a dead father. Since 2021 she has developed Mare Nostrum, or Our Sea, on Mediterranean cities and myths. In its first part (2021) a woman plays Sisyphus, running in a circle roped to a stone. The second, Secrets of the Infinite Sea (2022), turns to Prometheus and migration. Abjad Hawwaz: How I Was Destroyed by a Mall Thrice, her first installation (2022), is a sandpit shifted by machinery.

She graduated in law from Saint Joseph University in 2007 and Paris Descartes University in 2008. She took a BA in Performing Arts at Paris VIII University (2018). Secrets of the Infinite Sea premiered at Theater Bremen (2022) and travelled to the Mina Image Centre, Beirut (2023), and Trinity College Dublin (2025). She held the Medici Residency at Villa Medici (2025) and a fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude (2025 to 2026). Her solo exhibition Mare Nostrum opens at the Sursock Museum, Beirut, in 2026.