Zena El-Khalil

Zena is an artist, author, sacred activist, and yoga instructor based in Beirut, Lebanon. She uses visual art, site-specific installation, performance, and ritual to explore and heal war-torn sites of trauma. She creates her art with the intention of transforming these war-torn places and objects in them into generators of peace and reconciliation in nature and with communities.

During the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, Zena was one of the first largely followed Middle Eastern bloggers, her heartfelt eyewitness writings were published in the international press, including the BBC, CNN, and the Guardian. In 2008, she was invited to speak at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo and soon after, completed her memoir, “Beirut, I Love You”, now translated in several languages. In 2017, Zena held a groundbreaking national scale exhibition on healing and reconciliation entitled “Sacred Catastrophe: Healing Lebanon” at the Beit Beirut, a former sniper’s nest and war-torn building now renovated into a museum symbolic of Lebanon’s troubled conflicts. In 2018 Zena was awarded a Senior Fellowship with TED.