They Will Be Back. The Earth Remembers

They Will Be Back. The Earth Remembers is a solo exhibition of paintings by Ali Khalifeh at Art District, Gallery & Studio, on rue Gouraud in Gemmayzeh, Beirut, from 7 to 30 October 2026. The vernissage is on 7 October at 6pm.

The exhibition text begins: "Land is never fixed. It is continuously shaped, disturbed, and rewritten." The body of work draws on bioturbation, "the way living organisms carve through the earth, leaving behind networks of passage and transformation", as a metaphor for Gaza, "where landscapes have been altered by displacement, destruction, survival, and the continual redrawing of boundaries." The marks across each surface echo these networks and "speak of movement, adaptation, and confinement". "Read from above," the text continues, "the land becomes a record of both erasure and persistence, carrying more than one history at once."

The paintings are rooted in documented photographs and satellite imagery, but are "not intended as records themselves, but as continuations of them". Moving between aerial and terrestrial viewpoints, they "reveal the land as an active witness, marked by the visible consequences of conflict".