Sara Chaar

Sara Chaar is a multi-disciplinary artist who was born in Miami, Florida and lives in Beirut. She graduated in 2008 with a BA degree in Audio-visual and the following year made the decision to focus on her visual art practice, which spans drawing, painting and video art.

In her work, Chaar explores her own life experiences, observing the changes, movement and flux involved, before visually contextualising it, removing it from reality and then transferring her interpretation onto the canvas. 

It could be said that Chaar’s art and life provide inspiration for each other. In many ways, her creative process reflects the highs and lows, and turmoil that Beirut and other parts of the region have experienced over the years. In her practice, she constructs, deconstructs and reconstructs, all the while inviting audiences to consider her socioeconomic and geopolitical observations, while formulating their own analysis. Building up layers of paint or other material that serve as a base, she then scrapes and scratches it with various sharp objects. This process gives her abstract compositions a highly textured appearance, while suggesting difficult journeys or challenging experiences endured, battles fought even, laden with emotion. 

“Much like her hometown Beirut, Chaar’s canvases have all experienced many transformations, each one of which has enhanced them with new layers of depth,” Louis Denizet noted in an article.

An abundance of colour completes the compositions, sometimes in almost incongruent pastels and at other times in a bolder vibrant palette.

Sara Chaar’s work has been displayed in several solo exhibitions, most recently in: ‘An Untitled Body’, Galerie Claude Lemand, Paris (2023); ‘Continuous’, Marie Jose Gallery, London (2023); ‘Liminality’, Galleri Tom Christoffersen, Copenhagen (2022); ‘Wanderings’, CJ One Gallery, New York and Marie José Honein Art Gallery, London (2021); and ‘Imagined Certainty’, Art On 56th Gallery, Beirut (2021). Her first solo show was at the James Baird Gallery, Pouch Cove, Newfoundland, Canada, in 2020 and, ahead of it, she completed a residency at the Pouch Cove Foundation.

In 2022, Chaar participated in the ‘Mena Art Fair, Middle East & North Africa’, Paris, with Art on 56th Gallery.

Chaar has also taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including: ‘Summer Collective’, Art on 56th Gallery, Beirut (2022); ‘Lumières du Liban’, Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2021);  ‘Regeneration’, Art On 56th Gallery, Beirut (2021); ‘Furnweh’, Open Gallery, Berlin (2021); ‘Collectives’, Pop Up Art Gallery, Beirut (2021); ‘Out Of Lebanon’, Tom Christoffersen Art Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark (2020); ‘Come Back’, Art On 56th Gallery, Beirut (2020); ‘Full Colour’, KAF Art Gallery, Beirut (2019); ‘Little Gestures’, KAF Art Gallery, Beirut (2019); RAW collective exhibition, Beirut (2019); and ‘Lebanese Talents’, Beirut (2018). 

‘Empreinte 2’, a mixed media on canvas by Chaar, is on display at the Museum of the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, after being donated by Claude and France Lemand.