Zoheir Merhebi

Zoheir Merhebi (b. 1991) is a Swedish-Lebanese artist based in Tripoli, Lebanon. Trained as an architect at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA), his practice has evolved into a multidisciplinary exploration centred on sculpture, particularly wooden forms that draw from both ancestral memory and contemporary processes.

Merhebi’s work is inspired by organic structures such as human organs, parasites, and natural growths, as well as the architectural language of ancient civilizations and totemic symbols. His sculptures emerge from a dialogue between matter and meaning, using wood as a primary medium. Each work begins with a digital process that includes 3D modelling and printing, and yet culminates in traditional hand-carving techniques that honour the tactile language of the material.

For Merhebi, wood is not inert: its grain, weight, and resistance guide the form as much as he does. During the carving process, the material begins to speak, with each type of wood holding a specificity that, once sculpted, reveals a distinct voice. This process reflects his interest in impermanence, transformation, and balance: themes that echo in the way wood evolves, weathers, and changes over time.

While his architectural training informs his spatial sensibility, it is through sculpture that Merhebi engages most intimately with form and material. His work weaves together elements of tradition and modernity, blending the handmade with the digital, the ancestral with the evolving.