Dalia Baassiri - The Harvest - الحصاد

For the past 3 years, Dalia collected different forms of “vulnerability.” Mainly elements: wall fragments from the Fayyad Building facing the port of Beirut, burnt candles left post-prayers in Harissa, and broken tree branches strewn across the streets of Beirut, cut intentionally to make charcoal for Chichas Smokers.

Through the process of assemblage, these fragments fused into compositions that reveal their intrinsic properties, occasionally emulating and blending with other elements like chameleons.

At times, they become one entity, an iconic presence on raw canvas — a mosaic structure of past narratives woven into the fabric of the present. Just as in the horticultural grafting technique — where tissues from one plant are joined with those of another so that they grow together and function as a single plant — the wall pieces meld into the tree itself.

Her harvesting journey has been long: from dust to ash, to soap suds, to discarded objects... She has always been obsessively in search for fragile entities, with significant stories to tell, which she identifies as the raw materials of her work.

Once found, she gave them a new solid life by embracing their delicacy and strengthening them with adhesives. This obsession lead her to ask questions like: Is vulnerability contagious? Do we end up becoming where we live? Does a daily life in an unstable environment like Lebanon make us exceptionally familiar and inherently attracted to shreds and ruptures? Is she perpetually constructing a self-portrait through these clusters of broken pieces, or is this desire to preserve and merge a form of adaptation?