Julie Bou Farah
iCloud
3 - 31 December 2025
“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
About the artist
Born in Dahr El Sawan, Julie Bou Farah is a Lebanese artist who earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) where she has been teaching since 1992, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Lebanese University in 2012, where she has been a lecturer since 2007.
Bou Farah has had six solo exhibitions in different cultural centers between 1995 and 2017, and “iCloud” is her seventh solo show, taking place at Galerie Janine Rubeiz in 2025.
She has participated in numerous exhibitions in Lebanon and abroad, including four collective shows with Galerie Janine Rubeiz: the gallery’s collection in 1996, Memory in 1997, Lebanon: The Artist’s View II, at the Cork Gallery, London, in 2004, and Works on Paper in 2012.
Her international group exhibitions include La Marine Gallery and Galerie des Ponchettes (Nice, 1999), Al Majliss Art Gallery, Dubai, the Regency International Hotel, Bahrain (1995), and Tokyo International Art Fair, Roppongi (Japan, 2018).
In Lebanon, her work was selected twice for Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne (in 1994 and 1995), and has taken part in several exhibitions at renowned institutions such as ArtHaus, Rebirth Beirut, ArtScoops, Dar el Nimer, UNESCO, the Ministry of Tourism, Station des Arts, and the German Cultural Centre.
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 her, the world is a playground and the canvas her stage.
Children and animals frequently appear in her paintings, such as Circle of Life (1992), which earned her the status of sociétaire in 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.