Sfeir-Semler Gallery is delighted to present Lebanese artist Rayyane Tabet’s third solo exhibition in our Hamburg gallery.
Comprised of three new installations, the exhibition takes as a starting point three moments of rupture in modern history, which are acutely remembered in 2025: the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (1945), the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War (1975), and the 5th anniversary of the Beirut Port explosion (2020). Crystalizing in material form the ripples of these violent episodes, the exhibition is both a poetic homage and a thoughtful meditation, reflecting on how the human, material and natural worlds endure in the wake of devastation.
In the first-floor space, a ghostly herbarium of 40 plants and trees, catalogues the flora that survived the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Titled Hibakujumoku, the Japanese term meaning “survivor tree” the work depicts on etched glass each species that withstood the blast and continues to grow in Japan today. Bent, burned, and mutilated, they sprouted new life from their trunks and roots. The work quietly celebrates the biological resilience of these silent witnesses to nuclear apocalypse, inviting us to consider the memory they carry but also the hope they signal, for the day after.
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
Engraved glass panel, engraved metal plate, wooden shelf, 47 × 55 cm
The exhibition furthers Tabet’s ongoing investigation into the layered intersections of personal memory, collective trauma, political silence and the making of official histories. Across three hauntingly precise yet poignant works, he weaves together time and material, entrusting to the care of the objects he creates the stories and memories of the past. Through this meditation on aftermath the artist highlights that what remains is not only ruin, but also testimony, and the quiet insistence of survival. The Day After proposes that no ending is absolute. Every explosion, war, and collapse is followed by a day after, one in which the past is neither buried nor resolved but continually negotiated. One that is rife with possibility.