Zad Moultaka

Zad Moultaka, born in 1967 in Wadi Chahrour, Lebanon, is a composer and visual artist who lives and works between Beirut and Paris. His visual practice covers painting, installation, photography and video. Several of his installations pair physical materials with electroacoustic or vocal music that he composes himself.

Moultaka settled in Paris in 1984. Five years later the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris awarded him its First Prize. In 1993 he left a pianist's career for composition and visual art. Painting gained ground after his invitation to Rebirth at the Beirut Exhibition Center in 2011. Paper works such as Così in Cielo, from the Come in Terra series of 2015, combine water, acrylic and ink. The back of the sheet becomes part of the work.

In 2017 he represented Lebanon in Venice with ŠamaŠ, Soleil Noir Soleil. The installation set a bomber engine before a wall of 150,000 Lebanese coins, with sixty-four loudspeakers. It toured to the Sursock Museum in Beirut and to Suomenlinna, Helsinki, in 2018. Later projects include Ejecta for the reopening of the Sursock Museum in 2023 and Oro Tenebris at Galerie Tanit, Beirut, in 2024. His work is in the collections of the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, and the Boghossian Foundation, Brussels.