"I convinced myself that I was the world's stomach and that I had been chosen for the task of restoring this digestive organ to health"
Leonora Carrington
Maria Massaad
Lebanon, 1999 · Painter · Based in Lebanon
Massaad approaches painting as a form of static theatre: a delimited stage where figures, biomorphic forms, objects and landscapes enter into relationships through unusual gestures, intense colour, movement, comedy and tragedy. She brings elements from the real world together with active imagination to translate emotional and psychological experiences into images, moving between narrative and abstraction.
Her paintings are built through a process she thinks of as constructing a body. She begins with a “skeleton”: writing, research and a compositional grid that establishes a direction. Painting then becomes the skin and muscle, gradually merging every element into an interconnected structure. Oil is essential to this process; its capacity for blending allows nothing to remain entirely separate. Forms affect one another through a constant push and pull, reflecting her understanding of life as a network of causes, consequences and gravitational forces.
Massaad is interested in the hidden characters within us: the different moods, impulses and personas that emerge according to the environments we inhabit. Drawing from Jungian ideas of the unconscious and active imagination, she uses painting to encounter these characters, creating a stage where they can emerge, speak and be understood.
Her recent work has become more direct and narrative as her visual vocabulary develops. She is increasingly interested in how environments can allow less visible parts of ourselves to emerge, and how maintaining an inner voice and a sense of agency might become a quiet form of resistance within an increasingly accelerated and disconnected world.
Residencies
Tilal Utique
Tunis, Tunis — 2026Naseej
Lebanon — 2025
Selected Exhibitions
2026
Tilal Utique, Tunis — Group Exhibition
JAH Gallery — Group Exhibition
2025
Stitches, Tota, Beirut
To Die by the Pines, Gallery C6, Barcelona
I Am Here, Espacio 88, Barcelona
Les Maux Silencieux, Zilzal, Barcelona
Beirut Art Center — Art Market
OffRecord, Beirut — Art Market
2024
La Clandestina, Barcelona — Group Exhibition
Casa Moura, Barcelona — Group Exhibition
Ateneu L’Harmonia, Barcelona — Group Exhibition
2023
Les Maux Silencieux, La Conxita, Barcelona
2022
Prosa Visual, Re-Read, Barcelona
Contact
maria@mariamassaad.com
Instagram → @mariamassaad___