Jana El Kurd

Jana El Kurd is a self-taught artist who was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, and currently lives in Montreal, having moved to Canada in 2017. She began painting three years ago, marking both a journey of self-discovery and a significant career shift away from interactive media design and videography.

El Kurd’s work centres on her deep-rooted connection to the landscapes and architectural memories of her Lebanese childhood. Working with plaster and soft pastel tones, she reimagines buildings marked by conflict and change, capturing their fragile beauty and muted resilience. Her artworks reflect an interplay between innocence and decay (dreamlike, yet fractured) imbued with the enduring magic of memory.

Her process is raw, intuitive, and intentionally unpolished, allowing each piece to emerge organically. El Kurd uses stark contrasts and tactile textures to explore emotional contradictions: the push and pull between joy and melancholy, vulnerability and strength. “My art practice, a chaotic, tender interrogation of what it means to feel too much all at once, obsesses over the friction between vulnerability and resilience, and somehow always leads me back to the absurdity of love,” she explains.

Plaster is El Kurd’s signature medium, chosen for its sculptural, tactile quality and ability to evoke both strength and fragility. Her artistic and professional worlds intersect. She currently supports herself by painting, plastering, and tiling. “It’s felt like a full circle in many ways, especially since plaster has been my main medium in art long before I ever stepped onto a job site. Somehow, it all ties together,” she said.

Jana El Kurd’s work stands as a vulnerable offering—an evocative, sensory-rich exploration of memory, place, and emotional complexity. Her paintings are not declarations, but meditative reflections that invite audiences to sit in tension, wonder, and tenderness.