Elias how infrastructures of protection can mirror or prolong the violence they claim to avert.
2027 Biennial Year Find out more
Elias Nafaa is an artist, architect, and researcher working between Montréal and Beirut. Through sculpture, installation, moving-image work, and archival interventions, he examines how infrastructures of protection can mirror or prolong the violence they claim to avert. Navigating the fragile threshold where care tips into coercion, his practice translates states of emergency into material and narrative forms.
An alumnus of Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program, Nafaa is part of the Public Programs team at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and was a 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale Fellow with the Canada Council for the Arts.
His work has been presented at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, Galerie Tanit in Beirut, Manif d’art 12 – the Quebec City Biennial, and MUZEU in Braga, Portugal. Upcoming presentations include VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, Galerie UQO, and Centre Bang in Quebec.
His work is held in the collections of the Institut du monde arabe, the Dalloul Art Foundation, and the Beirut Museum of Art.
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Elias Nafaa, Handle with Care, 2026. Installation view at MUZEU, Braga, Portugal. Image courtesy of MUZEU. Photograph by Hugo Delgado -
Elias Nafaa, Eulogy to My Roots, 2023. Installation view at Galerie Tanit, Beirut. Image courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Tarek Haddad -
Elias Nafaa, Eulogy to My Roots, 2023. Installation view at Galerie Tanit, Beirut. Image courtesy of the artist. Photograph by Tarek Haddad -
Elias Nafaa, Traces of Time, 2021. Installation view at Institut du monde arabe, Paris. Image courtesy of the artist. -
Elias Nafaa, Memory-Scape No. 3, 2022. Installation view at Abroyan Factory, Bourj Hammoud, Lebanon. Image courtesy of the British Council Lebanon. -
Elias Nafaa, Handle with Care, 2026. Installation view at MUZEU, Braga, Portugal. Image courtesy of MUZEU. Photograph by Hugo Delgado
