Perpetual Identities is a series created by Lebanese artist Katya Traboulsi, conceived in 2014 as a profound act of transformation. The origins of the series reach back to 1975, the year the Lebanese Civil War erupted. On her fifteenth birthday, Traboulsi received the empty sleeve of a mortar shell. At the time, the object was placed on a shelf, unconsciously elevated to the status of a trophy that is emblematic of courage, defeat, and the ever-shifting identities of allies and enemies in wartime. Nearly forty years later, amid the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the memory of this object resurfaced.

The mortar shell, the most violent symbols of modern warfare, is reimagined here from its association with destruction and invasion, to that of bearer of life and cultural continuity. What had once been a silent token of conflict became the inspiration for a project designed to subvert the weapon’s inherent destructiveness and reorient it toward celebrating human resilience.

The resulting project, Perpetual Identities, is composed of 46 sculptural shells, each measuring 75 x 20 cm, fabricated in brass and iron and then adorned in collaboration with artisans from 46 countries. By engaging artisans whose work preserves ancestral techniques, the project underscores how heritage survives not only in monuments and artifacts but in the hands and practices of individuals.

Employing diverse materials such as ceramics, porcelain, resin, wood, and metal, each piece is clothed in the distinctive arts, crafts, and symbols of its assigned culture. The project thus transforms a once-uniform instrument of war into a multiplicity of voices and a collective archive of myths and traditions. In this new form, the mortar shell no longer embodies death and erasure. Instead, it becomes a “book” inscribed with cultural memory, or an “arrow” carrying knowledge rather than devastation.

Traboulsi situates Perpetual Identities within a broader reflection on the fragility and endurance of cultural identity. In times of war, minorities face persecution and the destruction of their heritage. In times of globalization, cultural particularities risk being dissolved into a homogeneity that erases ancestral know-how and indigenous forms of expression. Against both forms of erasure, Perpetual Identities affirms identity as dynamic, rooted in the past, enriched by encounter, and sustained through exchange.

The installation also challenges the viewer to reconsider the psychological and symbolic dimensions of the mortar shell itself. As both a phallic object and a vehicle of invasion, it has long embodied power and dominance. Traboulsi, in collaboration with the artisans, strips it of that function, reorienting it toward celebration and renewal. Through this project, Traboulsi reaffirms the role of artistic creation as a universal language that transcends conflict.

signed and titled on top of box