Biography of the artist

Born in Beirut. 1983
Works and Lives in Beirut - Marseille


Lara Tabet (b. 1983 Achkout, Lebanon) is a medical doctor and visual artist. In 2012, after finishing her residency in Clinical Pathology at the American University of Beirut Medical Center, Tabet completed a one-year full-time program at the International Center of Photography in New York and was the recipient of the Lisette Model scholarship. Her work has been featured throughout the Arab world, USA and Europe. Her exhibitions include How will it End, Villa Boghossian, Brussels, 2022, Emergent Strategies from the Deep, Savvy contemporary, Berlin 2021, L’intrus, Tabakalera International Centre for contemporary culture, San Sebastian (2018) Underbelly, Galerie Eulenspiegel, Basel, Switzerland (2018), Notas Al Futuro, Galeria Breve, Mexico (2017), Regards sur Beyrouth, La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille(2016), I spy with my little eye, The Mosaic Rooms, London (2015), Exposure 5, Beirut Art Center, Beirut (2013). Tabet received grants from AFAC (Arab Fund for Art and Culture) and Al-Mawred Al Thaqafi; she was the recipient of the Arte East fellowship in 2016 and was awarded the Sursock Museum Prize in 2018. She was an artist in residence at the National Center of Biotechnology in Madrid and La Becque in Switzerland and the scientific vessel Tara along their microbiome mission. In 2022, she was awarded the Prince Claus mentorship award for cultural and artistic response to environmental change. Tabet has taught photography at the American University of Beirut and at the International Summer Academy in Salzburg. Her work at the intersection of photography, biology and the environment is rooted in research and experimentation. She is interested in the interaction between photographic and biological materiality while questioning the porous boundaries between analog and digital languages. She uses old photographic techniques as well as new technologies in image-making and synthetic biology to explore the constant impulse to classifiy the living world and the tension between bio-politics and bio-poetics. She is currently working and living between Beirut and Marseille.