At Beirut’s Stone Garden Building, Randa Ali Ahmad’s The Gravity of Roots (How to get by without getting out) doesn’t just unfold — it unsettles. This isn’t a show about nostalgia; it’s about the quiet friction of belonging, and the invisible weight that memory leaves behind.
Across 14 canvases and four sculptural installations, Randa builds a world where displacement and rootedness exist in constant negotiation. Her palette leans earthy and raw — deep tones, organic textures, materials that feel like they’ve absorbed time. Clay, mixed media, and heavy brushwork create surfaces that are as much about what’s buried as what’s revealed. These aren’t decorative gestures; they’re tectonic. Forms hover between abstraction and figuration, echoing Randa’s own lived tension between Beirut and Los Angeles. Her works capture not just the geography of movement, but its emotional landscape: the pull of home, the lure of elsewhere, and the balancing act in between. Even the scenography plays with light and shadow, guiding you through a space that feels both anchored and in flux.
There’s a gravity to her work — but also the suggestion of levitation. The sense that you’re always on the verge of drifting. This isn’t just about physical roots or literal migration, but about the quiet forces that shape us: cultural memory, personal history, inherited longing. Randa, who began her practice during Lebanon’s civil war and honed it in Los Angeles, distills decades of movement into tactile, resonant forms. What holds you down? What do you carry with you? And what—if anything—can be left behind?
The Gravity of Roots runs through April 16 at the Stone Garden Building, Beirut.