Ashkal Alwan

Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, was set up in Beirut in 1993 as a non-profit arts organisation and is directed by Christine Tohme. It supports research, production and education in contemporary art, and its study and production programmes are open to the public free of charge.

Its main platforms are Home Works, a forum on cultural practice held every two to three years, and the Home Workspace Program. The latter is a free annual course of study for emerging artists and cultural practitioners. It also runs the streaming platform aashra, the online publishing platform Perpetual Postponement and a residency programme, and it publishes literary works and artist books.

In 2011 the organisation opened Home Workspace, a facility in Beirut with studios, performance spaces, auditoria and a multimedia library for contemporary art. In July 2022 it opened a smaller white-cube space on Armenia Street in Mar Mikhael, with shopfront windows that can be shuttered for exhibitions or opened onto the street.