Lamia Ziade

b. 1968

Lamia Ziade is a storyteller, illustrator, and visual artist who was born in Beirut, Lebanon and raised during the Lebanese Civil War. She was sent to France by her parents to escape the wars that ravaged Lebanon since 1975. 

She has lived and worked in Paris from the time she was 18 years old and studied graphic arts at the Atelier Met de Penninghen.  She worked as a fabric designer for Jean-Paul Gaultier and Issey Miyake, exhibited her art in galleries internationally, and published several illustrated books for adults and children.  In 2001, she published a small book dedicated to sexual exploration and erotic self discovery. 

While she was growing up in Beirut, she would look out the window of her grandmother’s house and see the dozens of white cylinders – each 157 feet tall – that presided over the port of Beirut. In 2020 when Lebanon was in the middle of the  global pandemic, the port exploded on August 4. It was a catastrophe. This blast was the third largest non-nuclear explosion in history when almost three thousand tons of ammonium nitrate, stored in the port’s Hangar 12, exploded. It pushed out a fireball that killed more than 200 people. Thousands more were injured, and 300,000 people were homeless. 

Her 2021 illustrated book “My Port of Beirut” was her personal account of the port explosion. For six months, Ziade wrote, illustrated, and photographed the wreckage that made its way throughout the internet. She wove together the play-by-play of this event with her own personal stories as well as giving the background that made this catastrophe possible.  She tells about seeing the silos after the blast: “With the silos destroyed, everything became possible, nothing would prevent Beirut from sinking into darkness.”  

The silos, because they were located less than 250 feet from the blast’s epicenter, shielded the western part of the city. They stayed standing – barely. “They were the gates of Beirut. You saw them from the sea, the air, whenever you would go from one side of the city to the other. . . They were like the pyramids, like the Eiffel Tower of Beirut. Every time I passed them, I would think how lucky we were to have this sentinel, these silos, protecting us.” 

Her “My Great Arab Melancholy” is her award-winning book with more than 300 illustrations, giving a history of the modern Arab world that explores the major thinkers and turning points that have shaped the Middle East in present time.

Her art works have been displayed in solo exhibitions in Paris, Munich, Los Angeles, and Beirut. A recent exhibition of her art in 2022 was part of “Beyrouth Livres 2022, Festival International et Francophone du Livre de Beyrouth.”

More here.