BRISTOL.- Arnolfini's 2026 programme opens with a major new solo exhibition from Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh (b. Beirut 1978), who poignantly and playfully navigates a multitude of complex themes such as identity, migration, trauma, inequality and gender, through her deep love of mythology, craftsmanship and materials.

Currently showing at Bonnefanten, Netherlands, Mounira Al Solh: A land as big as her skin includes her critically acclaimed Venice Biennale pavilion installation A Dance with her Myth from 2024, which takes visitors on a journey through ancient history and Middle Eastern mythology to contemporary times, asking existential questions about the cycle of life and death and the fate of women: “I think it’s important that we as women, are able to represent ourselves, and correct that image of the victim or the object where we were trapped for centuries.”

Growing up during the civil war in Lebanon, Al Solh now lives and works between her homeland and the Netherlands. Described as a ‘collector of stories’, Al Solh moves between small, personal memories and collective, political moments, capturing both contemporary diasporic journeys of migration and ancient voyages made by her sea-faring ancestors, bringing mythologies to life to ‘illuminate the present’. Imbuing her work with both an innate sadness and hope, Al Solh also maintains a familiar sense of joy and humour – a light-heartedness she sees as a right and form of resistance.

Mixing everyday life with ancient mythology, Al Solh works across a range of mediums and materials, encompassing painting, sculpture, film, performance and textiles within her practice. Having first studied painting at the Lebanese University in Beirut, Al Solh travelled to the Netherlands at the age of 24 – “I looked at the horizon and dreamt of going away to better understand who I was” – where she trained in Fine Art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, followed by an artist Fellowship at the Rijksakademie art school in Amsterdam. In recent years she has received growing international success; nominated for the Artes Mundi 10 prize and winning the ABN Amro Art Award in 2023 and representing Lebanon at the Venice Biennale in 2024.

A land as big as her skin – which travels from the Bonnefanten in Maastricht to Arnolfini in February 2026, before showing at the Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE, in 2027 – includes new drawings, textiles and installations, made especially for the exhibition, alongside Al Solh’s Biennale installation. Accompanied by a new documentary about the artist, Dancing on the Ruins (2025, dir. Bibi Fadlalla), the artist’s fascination with Picasso’s Guernica – also seen in her sketches and etchings inspired by Picasso and Goya – is explored alongside other inspirations and personal mythologies that surround the making of this exhibition.

Al Solh’s Venice installation A Dance with her Myth, sits at the heart of the exhibition, drawing together a life-size boat, film, painting and ceramics, inspired by her deep-rooted interest in stories from the past, her own war-torn upbringing, and Lebanese as well as Syrian culture:

“I feel that the more disasters you have occurring in your country, the more you feel the need to seek out strong connections – anchors of strength and cultural enrichment, for instance. You need to hang on to the things that are ancient and deeply entrenched which serve as unwavering pillars in turbulent times of destruction and decay… I remembered the power of embroidery, and the power of myths and ancient history in Lebanon, used as a regenerative tool, to heal our traumas and reconnect us with our past, even though it is perhaps a partially reconstructed past, like much of our history.”

Critically revisiting Lebanon’s Phoenician myths and stories, Al Solh retells the ancient myth of Princess Europa, kidnapped and carried across the sea from Tyre in Lebanon to Cretan shores by Zeus, king of the Greek Gods, disguised as a white bull. Al Solh subverts the original story, written and imagined by male writers from ancient Greece, reversing Europa’s fortune and empowering women, whilst making a connection to recent Lebanese history where generations of people were forced to flee their home due to constant wars, invasions and corruption. Alongside this vast, multidisciplinary work sit two new installations, Elissa’s Room and Europa’s Bedroom (2025) further exploring the fortunes of Europa and Queen Elissa (founder of the colony of Carthage in North Africa), through a modern lens, building upon the artist’s growing interest in folklore and mythology.

Al Solh’s subversive and often humorous installations are accompanied by vivid, large-scale paintings, portraying the importance of music and dance in Lebanese culture, and its complex role in rebuilding and defining lives during conflict. Depicting the colours of her homeland, From Beirut to Saida Ya My Eyes (2023) refers to an iconic love song in which the music played upon the radio between news bulletins provides a sense of relief and escape. Flying, clapping, grooving, tasting love (2025), captures the role of clapping in Arabic music, strengthening the listener’s experience and helping ‘the soul to fly’; whereas Silicone, Poppies and a Couple of Invisible Deffs (2023) is inspired by the music scene in Beirut in the 1950s and 1960s, and the film industry in Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.

Textiles also feature throughout, most memorably in the work Red Cypress Tree (2025), made with the Inaash association in Beirut, who have worked since the 1970s in Lebanon where they have been exiled, to preserve the embroidery heritage of Palestinian women residing in refugee camps. Multiple variations of the beloved tree – known as both a symbol of life and grief – are embroidered in shades of red and fuchsia upon swathes of black fabric, each design specific to a Palestinian town or village. Another new work Words of grief and mourning (2025), reflects the loss that runs throughout Al Solh’s practice with words of mourning and farewell embroidered and hand-painted in Arabic letters upon white sacks (recently used to clear rubble from bombed buildings, by fleeing people to carry their belongings, or most poignantly for human remains of those killed in recent conflicts within the region).

A land as big as her skin embodies Al Solh’s deeply personal and collaborative approach in which she dances with myths and subverts traditional storytelling techniques, creating an exhibition that is: “rhythmical, whirling and melodious. It makes you want to dance and to cry, just like the most beautiful love songs.”

This exhibition is organised in collaboration with Bonnefanten (Maastricht, The Netherlands). This exhibition is made possible by The Mondriaan Fund and Ammodo Art.

This exhibition will travel to Sharjah Art Foundation in 2027.

Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978, Lebanon; lives and works between Beirut and Amsterdam) is a visual artist whose practice spans installation, painting, sculpture, video, drawing, text, embroidery, and performative gestures. Through micro-history and mythological storytelling, her work engages with equality and bears witness to the impact of conflict and displacement. Al Solh’s work is socially engaged while being political and poetically escapist simultaneously. Her practice utilizes oral documentation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and wordplay to explore themes of memory and loss. Motivated by acts of sharing and storytelling, change, and resistance, Al Solh strives to craft a sensory language that transcends nationality and creed.

Al Solh has had exhibitions at Bonnefanten, Maastricht, The Netherlands (2025); Serralves Museum, Porto, Portugal (2025), Museumsquartier Osnabrück, Germany (2022); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2022); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2020); Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai (2018); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2018); and The Art Institute Chicago (2018). She has also participated in group exhibitions including at Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2025), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2024); Sharjah Biennial (2023); Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen, the Netherlands (2022); Busan Biennale (2022); Musée National de Pablo Picasso–La Guerre et la Paix, Vallauris, France (2020); Palais De Tokyo, Paris (2020); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2020); Carré d’Art Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes (2018), Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens (2017); Venice Biennale (2015); New Museum Triennial, New York (2012); Sharjah Biennial 9 (2009); and 11th International Istanbul Biennial (2009), among others. Al Solh is represented by Sfeir-Semler Gallery.