Elias Nafaa
Elias Nafaa is an artist, architect, and researcher working between Montréal and Beirut. Through sculpture, installation, moving-image essays, and archival interventions, he examines how infrastructures of protection can mirror the very violence they claim to avert. Navigating the fragile line where acts of care tip into coercion, Nafaa translates states of emergency into charged material, spatial, and narrative forms.
A graduate of Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Programme, he is part of the public programs team at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts’ Venice Architecture Biennale Fellowship in 2025. His work has been presented at Galerie Tanit in Beirut, the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, and Manif d’art – The Québec City Biennial in 2026. His works are held in institutional collections including the Institut du monde arabe (Claude and France Lemand Donation), the Dalloul Art Foundation, and the Beirut Museum of Art. [Source: VOX, 2026]