At Janine Rubeiz Gallery, artist Julie Bou Farah invites viewers into a poetic, tactile exploration of memory with her new exhibition “iCloud,” where clouds, birds, and cacti become living symbols of vulnerability, resilience, and the joy of seeing the world through a child’s eyes.
With “iCloud,” Julie Bou Farah transforms the gallery into a space where memory takes on tangible form, navigating between presence and absence, gentleness and pain, reverie and reality. Rooted in childhood and imagination, her pictorial world offers a sensory re-reading of memory, intimacy, and the passage of time.
Describing her approach, the artist declares:
“‘iCloud arises from fragments of my memories. My clouds are vessels, bodies that hold what memory cannot preserve. They are not metaphors, but elements the viewer can touch: imperfect, alive, carrying both presence and absence.
My images disrupt expectations by removing or adding components from their usual context, presenting them without the face to which they belong. The cactus, for instance, appears as a paradox—resilient yet vulnerable, an organic archive of endurance, its thorns both protecting and wounding, much like memory itself.
My personal firmament is a constellation of a thousand imaginary clouds, each taking its own configuration and holding its own stories, shaped by intuition and spontaneity. They are recontextualized, multiplied, sometimes assaulted. Replacing the iris of the eye of birds, I open the space for us to question what we see and what we think we know. Do the birds echo the flight of memory, a reflection of what the eye is seeing? Are they, in fact, an opening into another reality? Are we looking at an inner vision, or something else entirely?
‘iCloud’ invites viewers to experience memory differently, revealing layers of what slips away and what quietly remains, through tactile, visceral forms.” —Julie Bou Farah
Born in Dahr El Sawan, Julie Bou Farah earned her Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in 1991, where she later taught. In 2007, she joined the Lebanese University as a lecturer and has since participated in numerous exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad.
Her international group exhibitions include the Cork Gallery (London, 2004), La Marine Gallery and Galerie des Ponchettes (Nice, 1999), Al Majliss Art Gallery and the Regency International Hotel (Dubai, 1995), and Roppongi (Tokyo, 2018).
Throughout her career, Bou Farah has remained in touch with her inner child, a quality evident in the playfulness, immediacy, and spontaneity of her work. Her imaginative style captures daily life in its simplest and most charming forms, drawing inspiration from the world’s enchantment and vitality. For Bou Farah, the world is a playground and the canvas her stage.
Children and animals frequently appear in her paintings, such as her “Circle of Life” painting (1992), which earned her the status of sociétaire at the Salon d’Automne at the Grand Palais in Paris. In 1999, her painting “Le Manège” (Fun Fair) won first prize at the Henri Matisse 16th UMAM Biennale in Nice, France.
Her work is distinguished by its harmonious and vibrant use of color, instinctive approach, and naïve yet sophisticated depiction of space—a celebration of the joy and spontaneity of life.
Exhibition on view through December 31, 2025.
Comments