Nathalie Harb | Artists in Residence | Kamov Residency

Photo: Nadim Asfar

• Biography
• The Project
• Organized by

• Nathalie Harb

  Nathalie Harb is a multidisciplinary artist and designer based between Paris and Beirut, focused on rethinking public space from the perspective of everyday urban practitioners in conflict-affected cities. Her work is centered around well-being and spatial justice. It challenges notions of home, shelter, and agency through different practice formats, including public interventions, installations, and scenography, sited accross urban and rural contexts in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. By adopting a collaborative, horizontal approach, Harb’s projects emphasize themes of safe space and equity, with authorship shared among a diverse range of design collaborators, including musicians, acoustic consultants, permaculture experts, environmental consultants, researchers and architects.
  
  Nathalie's installations explore the potential for intimacy and rest within the bustling urban landscape, introducing moments of stillness in an otherwise saturated environment.  Her projects aim to create spaces that foster connection and reflection, and to offer  alternative visions of public space that prioritize inclusivity and a sense of belonging. 
  
  Nathalie's work has been shown internationally and supported by initiatives such as Unesco’s Week of Sound, the American University of Beirut’s Neighborhood Initiative, the London Design Biennale, the European Research Council, Dubai Design Week, Beirut Design Week, the London Festival of Architecture, Soncities and the Temporary Art Platform. She has also been the recipient of several residencies, including ZKU Berlin, Residencia São João in Bresil, and La Cité Internationale des Arts-Paris.

• 19.03.-13.04.2025.

  Over 23 days at the Kamov residency in Rijeka, I will reflect on the fragmented nature of time and its impact on the body by revisiting the past year in 15-day segments. Each day, I will explore the images, sounds, information, and news that shaped it, in order to build a collective archive based on personal experience of a year marked by multiple, often conflicting temporalities. Using photographs, sound recordings, and journal entries, I will create a video or collage that distills the essence of each segment. The past year felt both distant and immediate, shaped by the genocide in Palestine, the war in Lebanon, neofascism of Trump's leadership reversing decades of progress, and my own experience with illness. Living outside Lebanon, in a western city largely unaffected by the physical violence of war, I found myself caught between personal and global time loops. My body was absorbing the violence in the region and the slow, suspended cycles of illness diagnosed at the same time, for which I was undergoing treatment. The cognitive dissonance of these overlapping time layers and their concrete effects on my body have influenced both my experience of a world saturated by images of violence and the possibility of artistic creation, shaped by the limits of the body.

  The stay in Rijeka offers a space to slow down and reflect on the feeling of moving through a world that outpaces the rhythm of the soul. It’s a moment to align the body and mind, to become present in each day. Situated where the Rječina River meets the Adriatic Sea, Rijeka provides a fitting backdrop for this reflection. It echoes the multi-dimensional diary I created in my first collaboration with Art Explora, where I explored the dialogue between land, sea, and river as symbols of personal and collective journeys. The rhythms of Rijeka resonate with this ongoing reflection as I confront the shifting layers of personal, collective, and political crises, exploring how trauma, survival, and creation take shape in response to the fragmented nature of time—themes I aim to reflect on in my next artistic endeavor, and of which I would have created a personnal archive. 

      

• Art Explora, The Island Club and MMSU

  Art Explora is an international foundation that inspires new encounters between arts and audiences – locally, nationally and internationally.

  As one of the activities of the Art Explora Festival, a residency program has been launched in partnership with Island Club.Conceived as a platform for exchanges and narratives across borders, this programme directly supports contemporary creation and federates a vast community of artists, scientists and art professionals around crucial social, cultural and ecological issues linked to the Mediterranean.

  The Island Club is an independent non-profit space based in Cyprus, hosting exhibitions by local and international artists as well as film screenings, performances and readings.

  The Rijeka Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMSU), established in 1948, offers dedicated support for innovative approaches to accessing, producing, and presenting art. The museum structures its program around educational activities and various models for exhibiting visual arts. Its exhibition concepts address new discursive possibilities, creating a space for inspiration, idea exchange, and active participation. Under the banner of openness, creativity, and engagement, together with artistic, cultural, and social organizations, the museum promotes the exploration of visual arts, collaboration, and exchange both regionally and internationally. The museum's collection offers a diverse range of artistic visions with approximately 10,000 works of art from the late 19th century to the present day.