Lebanon in Every Shade

Lebanon in Every Shade, a solo exhibition of paintings by Jessy Tabet, will run at Rebirth Beirut from 5 to 14 November 2026. The venue is on Gouraud Street in Gemmayzeh, Beirut, and Gabriel Rizkallah is the curator. Tabet paints in acrylic on canvas. She builds up layers of colour with brushes and palette knives until parts of the surface stand in low relief. The opening is on Thursday 5 November, from 5pm to 9pm.

The paintings return to places across Lebanon: the old rooftops of Beirut and its bright lanes, the Mediterranean, the mountains, cedars and fiery sunsets. The show describes her manner as abstract figurative. Her compositions sit between observed scenes and personal interpretation, carried by strong colour, stacked layers of paint and ridges left by the knife. The show explains its title shade by shade. Each shade stands for one side of the country: belonging, nostalgia for a familiar street, the calm sea, the bustle of Beirut and the hope of renewal.

The exhibition poster reproduces Soul of the City, an acrylic on canvas from 2026 measuring 100 by 120 centimetres. A dense cluster of white, grey and ochre houses with red roofs floats in a band across the middle. Turquoise sky fills the space above, and the buildings are mirrored in blue water below. Other canvases on the artist's website keep to the same ground. Raouche (2022) shows the Raouche rock in Beirut, and The Bridge (2022) shows the Jounieh Bridge. Echoes of The Old Town and Lebanon Blues both date from 2025.

Tabet was born in Gemmayzeh, the Beirut district where the exhibition takes place. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Architecture of the Lebanese University. Several of her paintings, among them Eternal Cedar (2023) and Cotton Sky (2023), have hung at the residence of the United States ambassador in Awkar. Flying High (2024) was shown in the ambassador's private office.