Mounira Al Solh
Sonsbeek 2026
Park Sonsbeek, Arnhem
Inleiding
And Europa fled / En Europa sloeg op de vlucht / عندما رحلت أوروبا
2026
Photo: Django van Ardenne
Floating on the St. Jansbeek, between the grassland of Park Sonsbeek, a monumental sculpture of a woman rises from a Murex shell—the ancient creature whose purple dye brought prosperity to the Phoenicians and which grew scarce due to over-exploitation. Larger than human scale, the figure carries a suitcase, a mobile phone, and an oar, collapsing ancient and present time into one body. A Phoenician boat sits atop her head, her body pierced by bullets.
Over de kunstenaar
Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978, Beirut) is a visual artist who lives and works between Beirut and Zutphen, the Netherlands. Her practice encompasses installation, painting, sculpture, video, drawing, text, embroidery, and performative gestures. Irony and self-reflectivity are central to her work, which explores women’s issues, tracks patterns of micro-history, bears witness to the impact of conflict and displacement, is socially engaged, and can be political and poetically escapist all at once. Her practice utilizes oral documentation, multidisciplinary collaboration, and wordplay to explore themes of memory and loss. Motivated by acts of sharing and mythological storytelling, change, and resistance, Al Solh strives to craft a sensory language that defies nationality and creed. She represented Lebanon at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024 and her solo exhibitions have been held at venues including Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, the Netherlands, 2025; Museumsquartier Osnabrück, Germany, 2022; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK, 2022; and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2020. She has participated in group exhibitions including Liverpool Biennial 2025; Sharjah Biennial 15, 2023; Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 2022; and Busan Biennale 2022. Among other prizes, Al Solh received the ABN AMRO Art Award and Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize, both in 2023.
Mounira Al Solh would like to thank Anything is Possible in Abcoude and boatbuilder George Barbour
Commissioned by Sonsbeek 2026
With thanks to the artist