Hiba Kalache's 'Encounters—Ongoing' Drawings Document Conversations in Lebanese Mountains

Hiba Kalache created a series of drawings titled 'Encounters—ongoing' based on chance meetings during road trips in the mountains of Lebanon. The works serve as markers of conversations with landowners, farmers, and field workers, capturing their stories and relationships to the land. Each drawing features a simple tree branch or plant fragment from the site of the encounter, using ink washes to blend intuitive and intentional approaches. Excerpts from the exchanges are hand-written in Arabic on the picture plane. The project abstracts these interactions to allude to and blur sectarian divisions tied to land ownership, reflecting Lebanon's geopolitical context. The drawings reproduce the spontaneity of brief exchanges, indexing personal accounts along specific terrains and borders. The series was published on ARTMargins Online on October 15, 2019, with content available through MIT Press as free access. Kalache's method emphasizes direct creative processes to document unplanned encounters in fragmented representations.