Lebanese artist Samar Mougharbel’s ceramic sculptures in Art De Triomphe, 2025, are shaped by Lebanon’s concurrent crises. Tangled pipes, heavy but empty, symbolize the duality of the resistance and the subsidence of Lebanese people living under the pressure of economic collapse, political instability, and ongoing uncertainty.

Mougharbel was introduced to ceramics while studying finance, when she participated by chance in a workshop with Dorothy Salhab Kazemi. Kazemi, the first ceramics artist in Lebanon and the Middle East, later became Mougharbel’s instructor and influenced her early work. 

When she met Greta Naufal, a Lebanese visual artist, her art evolved from functional to politically engaged, addressing Lebanon’s revolving socio-political and economic crises. The two artists were politically involved; together they did an exhibition criticizing Solidere (the private company responsible for the reconstruction of downtown Beirut) for erasing the traces of the Lebanese Civil War, and demolishing ancient ruins uncovered in archeological excavations in favor of real estate development projects. Mougharbel had participated in those excavations herself, and it saddened her to see the history of her city wiped out. From these experiences, she was inspired to create artworks that capture the spirit of Beirut and preserve its historical memory.

With her late works, believing that our five senses are ephemeral, but limited in time and space, Mougharbel aimed to transcend these boundaries through the use of fired clay – a material that, once shaped, becomes eternal, carrying our stories long after we are gone. In these works, her process is intuitive, allowing the clay to guide her as she balances the heaviness of the material with the emptiness of the tubes she creates.

The arch, Art de Triomphe, represents the bond between clay and gravity as an interplay of resistance and surrender, of molding and being molded. Remains of Motion, 2023, is a reflection on the human condition. This artwork is made of the delicate yet strong material, resin, to represent the strength of Lebanese people as they carry the burdens of life while still being vulnerable and fragile. Through these pieces, Mougharbel turns clay into a medium of storytelling, documenting a nation caught between collapse and regeneration.