Suni‘a Bisihrika: Made With Your Magic

Suni‘a Bisihrika (Made With Your Magic) is the Beirut chapter of an ongoing project conceived by the curator Tarek Abou El Fetouh and initiated by Dream City Festival in Tunis. After its first presentation in Tunis in 2025, it opened at Beirut Art Center on 30 July 2026 and runs until 25 October 2026, before future chapters in Damascus, Jeddah and Baghdad.

The title borrows a mnemonic phrase used to memorise the eight principal Arabic maqâms: each letter stands for Saba, Nahawand, ‘Ajam, Bayati, Sika, Hijaz, Rast and Kurd. The curator reads these musical modes as carriers of history, names and origins that, in his words, "reveal a rich artistic and cultural diversity beyond national, religious, and linguistic identities" and have endured "through political shifts, cycles of exclusion and persecution, wars, and the collapse of empires." The exhibition follows those echoes into questions of minorities and identity, art and authority, and connections to land and other beings.

In Beirut the show brings together artists from across the region, pairing seven commissions first made for Tunis with seven new ones produced for Beirut with the support of Culture Resource (Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafy). Highlights include Sonia Kallel's woven wool sculpture made with the Mrazig community of Douz, Alia Farid's film Chibayish shot in the marshlands of southern Iraq, Haig Aivazian's sculpture from his work on so-called Oriental music, Walid Raad's Dry Run made with Suha Traboulsi, Bady Dalloul's Age of Empires, Ala Younis's work on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and a large vinyl billboard of Etel Adnan's drawing Plage Rose.

Works from two of the region's most significant collections sit in dialogue with the new commissions. The Saradar Collection lends works made at pivotal moments in Lebanon's history, among them Omar Onsi's Journée de Condoléances au Djebel Druze (1935) and Samir Khaddaje's The Red Purse (1987), while private collections present works by artists from across the Arab world, including Ammar Farhat's Café Chantant (1957).

At the heart of the space, Molo café and bar takes up residence for the full twelve weeks, a tribute to the cafés that served as meeting places for artists and thinkers in Arab cities, with furniture and textiles by Oliver de Gemmayzeh and Skaff. It hosts the public programme of conversations, listening sessions and music organised around the eight maqâms. In the centre's words, the exhibition proposes art as a space where "inherited forms can be reconsidered, histories reread, and new ways of listening, gathering, and imagining the future can begin."