Omar Mismar

Omar Mismar (b. 1986, Lebanon) is an artist based in Beirut. He works in mosaic, film and installation. His works include a series of stone mosaics made with Abdel Moneim Barakat, a Syrian master mosaicist who left Syria in 2011 and has lived in Lebanon since.

The mosaic project began in 2015, when Mismar read about men described as Syria's Monuments Men. The series uses the techniques of Roman and Byzantine mosaic to embed puns and references to Syria's conflict and displacement. Works include Ahmad and Akram Protecting Hercules (2019 to 2020) and Two Unidentified Lovers in a Mirror (2023). His film A Frown Gone Mad received an award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at IDFA, Amsterdam, in 2024. Root and Branch (2026) and Suspending belief, Suspending disbelief (2017/2026) look at how suppressed slogans resurface. They also trace how speech persists and mutates between hearing and saying.

Mismar received a BFA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut in 2008. As a Fulbright scholar, he completed an MFA in Social Practice and an MA in Visual and Critical Studies in 2015. Both are from California College of the Arts. He attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in 2016 and 2017. He taught at the American University of Beirut as assistant professor of visual arts from 2018 to 2022. His work was shown in Foreigners Everywhere at the Venice Biennale (2024) and the 14th Taipei Biennial (2025). Solo exhibitions include Confiscated Imaginaries at Beirut Art Center (2022) and Studies in Mosaics at the 9th Mosaic Biennial in Ravenna (2025). He was a Boris Lurie Fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in 2022.