Fragmenta, a new project in Beirut celebrates Lebanese design and material legacy

For millennia stone has shaped human civilization. A natural material that signifies permanence, resilience and continuity—since prehistoric days stone slabs have served as places as refugee, craft and ritual. As a new project in Beirut demonstrates, stone, in all its shapes and variations, continues to give life to enduring natural creations of beauty and reflection.

Interspersed between dozens of rows comprising various slabs of stone at the Najem Group’s factory in Byakout, just outside of Beirut, are newly created design pieces made in marble by 49 Lebanese artists and designers.

Titled “Fragmenta: The Revival of Lost Forms,” the exhibition, curated by longtime Beirut-based designer Gregory Gasteralia, marks the first edition of Fragmenta, a new design project by Nour Najem and Guilaine Elias, a Beirut-based interior architect and designer, rooted in the history and material legacy of craftmanship.

The first iteration invited 51 Lebanese creatives, both emerging and established, to use the natural material of marble to create new art and design objects that are on view, evocatively placed within the various rows of differently colored and cut stones, at the Najem Factory, itself located in an old stone quarry until 2005 when the Najem Group, Lebanon’s leading manufacturer of stone and marble, acquired it.

Built from the archives of the Najem Group, over the course of six months, the artists and designers transformed discarded marble fragments, including forgotten samples, broken slabs and offcuts, to create new objects filled with meaning and purpose. Marble constitutes the majority material—at least 70 percent—of each piece that has been made in unison with artisans and engineers from the Najem Group.

“For me, the exhibition is not only an aesthetic exercise but tells of the relationship between the designers and elements from the past; it bridges the ancient with the contemporary and shows how everything is connected,” explains Gatserelia.

“Each fragment carries a silent story,” states Gatserelia in the opening press release. “Through creativity it begins a new one.”

The exhibition is divided into five thematic spaces that reflect different ways of engaging with the material. The first, Contemplation, showcases how stone can be used as an introspective medium to explore one’s inner states.

Here ‘Untold,’ a sculptural piece by Cybelle Moutran Ceramics made of Carrara marble, black ceramics and bianco bello mounted on high density fiberboard presents a vertical standing sculpture that contemplates, explains Moutran, “Things that are left untold, that weigh so much they disrupt and stay with you.”

The black sheets found in the rectangular top reference, she explains, “the experiences and feelings we go through in life. The black sheets can be found in the trunk of the sculpture, positioned within white rectangular sheets reflecting on the idea of untold pain and trauma that affects the whole until it is released.

Also in the section is an installation of found carefully carved stone objects on a stone cutting table with delicate pencil drawings by a woman who was a dressmaker on several of the objects by artist and art historian Gregory Buchakjian. When the woman passed away, the building she used to receive her customers in, housing also her drawings, was demolished. Her drawings were preserved and Buchakjian gives them new life by stenciling them onto pieces of elegantly carved stone fragments.

The second section, Spolia: The Revival of Lost Forms present works where architectural fragments and historical materials are reassembled, exploring objects as both vessels for continuity and decay, bridging past and present. Designers like Sabine Sakayem and Bruna Teeny of the female-led collective Yakin, presented a long, two-side bench made with a rainbow-like gathering of 430 strips of differently colored marbled. One orange-colored strip is tiger eye, a rare stone.

“The concept [of Fragmenta] is very interesting because it is like a sustainability project,” explains Sakayem. “We are using flat fragments that were left over.”

In the same section, artist Alfredo Tarazi, creates three totem pole-like sculptures called ‘Happy Family,” made of Travertino fire red, beige relvina and Palissandro blue stones, each donning naïve depictions of happy and sad faces with several black mortars on top of each head as if to allude to the country’s upheavals.

The third space, Craftsmanship, celebrates human artistry on stone creations, while the fourth, In the Raw, presents pieces where the natural shape of a stone influences the final form of a design object. Works like Studio Paola Sakr’s coffee table and stool made of a piece of natural Travertino with a plush fabric on top for the seat of Studio Manda’s ‘Mehrir’ a long bench made of untouched raw marble and brass, capture the beauty of natural stone.

The final section, Cosmic Portal, presents a space where stone objects become sources for spiritual and meditative transcendence, touching upon ancient rituals, memory and meaning. Here Tessa Sakhi presents ‘Blooming (In)Carnations,’ a pillar to floor lamp made of a granite base and stainless steel, Richard Yasmine’s ‘Leftover Love Letters,’ presents a poetic meditation on ruins where glass and fabric flowers shoot out from a stone, fractured base and Tarek Moukadem’s ‘What Remains,’ presents a coffee table incorporates old marble mosaics and casted concrete to create an object that seems to have stood the test of time.

Roula Salamoun’s ‘Asterite’ table eloquently brings together fragments of past stories into geometric forms on one shared surface.

“The octagonal columns are the fragments I picked,” explains Salamoun. “I decided to create a conservation piece where you have a constellation of elements, reminiscent of the earth’s formation. I worked on the connection between the elements and wanted to reveal every point of connection.

Next to ‘Asterite’ is Studio Bazazo’s ‘Portal,’ an object incorporating a mirror encircled by an arched alabaster fragment with a seat.

“The arch was the fragment itself and forms the border on the outside,” said Bazazo. “It reminded me of a Roman or Greek arch and contemplates the idea of perspective with the focal point into the mirror. We added the bench and inclined the mirror to follow the perspective. It’s meant to be very architectural.”

The exhibition runs until September 21 at the Najem Group Factory where the full collection of works is on view after which it will transform into a traveling exhibition, unfolding at various places across Beirut for the month of October. There is some discussion of the works traveling to the United Arab Emirates to be showcased before the end of the year.

The pieces in ‘Fragmenta’ offer an ode to the past while embracing the present and the future. It is humanistic as Gatserelia explains in form and substance.

“The most important element is connection,” he says. “I wanted the designers to start being more open about what is beauty.”