The Greatness of All, 2025, Acrylic on Canvas, 100 x 200 cm
It was in the middle of a war that Mazen Khaddaj returned to Lebanon. What seemed like an irrational move felt, to him, inevitable. This decision would mark not only the Lebanese multidisciplinary artist’s return to painting, but the beginning of a new visual language. The moment he arrived in his hometown of Aley, “I found myself painting mountains,” he writes. The land and landscapes he pictured witnessed everything, crumbled at nothing, and rooted him home. Elements he had once taken for granted – the light, the sun, the moon, the air – revealed themselves with intense spirituality. Nature returned his gaze and his palette followed.
The works that would emerge from this awakening are nothing short of emotional terrains, unpacking memory, longing, reclamation, and a clarity gained only after distance. Painted during the war, they are anything but bleak. Instead, they pulse with Lebanon’s reds and golds, its shifting greens, and its impossible brightness – and that, with peace, joy, and connection. In the mountains of Aley, Khaddaj was reminded that endurance can be soft, grounded, radiant. And so can his art.
Rigidity and Grace, 2025, Acrylic on Canvas, 90 x 140 cm
But this new chapter is anchored in a broader artistic philosophy that has guided him for years. Khaddaj describes himself as an “accidental artist”, someone who stepped into art instinctively rather than by design. His multidisciplinary practice spans painting, performance, video, and installation, each revealing a different layer of the self. Painting is ritual, intuitive, an act of emotional release. Performance is embodied and social, often confronting identity, migration, and belonging head-on. Across mediums, he treats transformation as constant and honesty as imperative. Because the internal world is never static, his work follows that motion. Art, for Khaddaj, is the process by which inner landscapes become visible.
Mother Mountain, 2025, Acrylic on Canvas, 65 x 95 cm
Hugged by The Mountains, 2025, Acrylic on Canvas, 200 x 170 cm
Before this return, Khaddaj had already built his multilingual artistic identity. He began his career in Beirut after earning a BA in Graphic Design and spending several years as an art director in multinational agencies. His first solo exhibition, Bonds, in 2013, marked the start of a practice that moved quickly beyond painting into performance, video, and installation. Projects like The Middle State (2015) and Emotion in Motion (2016) – which included The Eye, now part of the permanent collection at the Modern and Contemporary Art Museum in Byblos – established recurring themes of individuality, society, and the fluidity of self. Each body of work expanded his vocabulary, reinforcing that form, like identity, is never fixed.
His years in Germany further sharpened this sensibility. After joining the Pilotenkuche International Art Residency in Leipzig in 2015, Khaddaj relocated there, later studying as a guest student at the Academy of Fine Arts. The experience ignited a deeper examination of migration, dislocation, and belonging, resulting in projects such as I Am a Foreigner (2017–2020), I End to Begin (2019), and The Laundry Room (2019). His work gained recognition across Europe – including a nomination for the Berlin Art Prize in 2022 – affirming a practice defined by fluidity and by the translation of inner states into shifting forms. Rather than dilute his connection to Lebanon, this period clarified it.
Weaved Landscape, 2025, Acrylic on Canvas, 95 x 130 cm
The Distant Bright, 2025, Acrylic on Canvas, 110 x 200 cm
In Mountains of Light, this philosophy crystallizes into a visual language shaped by return. The mountains surrounding his hometown of Aley became both anchor and collaborator. The palette shifted. The tones warmed. The hazy translucence of his earlier pieces gave way to layered chromatic bands that feel carved from the land itself. Rather than topography, these paintings center on continuity – how the land holds us even when we leave it, and how returning can feel like remembering a language you once spoke fluently.
The series also embraces luminosity as a conceptual force. Light is both a metaphor and a mood for hope, clarity, and orientation. Even in the darkest moments of the country’s unraveling, it insists on showing through. Khaddaj paints it not as an escape but as a quiet assurance that endurance is in transformation. Nowhere is this view more evident than in the titles of the works. Mother Mountain. Rigidity and Grace. The Greatness of All. The Distant Bright. Through these paintings, Khaddaj has returned – not retreated – home.