Always seen and never contemplated, Traboulsi’s work arrests and represents the aesthetic practices that tie the North with the rest of Lebanon encapsulated in the vernacular formalisms and conventions of the Lebanese pick-up truck. Rej3a Ya Mama tethers themes of solidarity, difference, group identification, superstition, love, and the afterlife. 

Traboulsi resuscitates the contradictions, complexities, and beauty of the ornament along with the graphic and typographic work adorning the backs and fronts of Lebanese trucks circulating across multiple geographies within and around Lebanon. Sharp, saturated colors gild phrases and symbols, reifying the image of their author. Inspired by the geographical differences between the Lebanese trucks and their aesthetics, Traboulsi’s iron works are an homage to Tripoli, revealing and transmitting images of her own informed by the cultural practices of the North. Abstracted floral gilds and birds inspired by cultural images coalesce with Khatt (calligraphy) proclaiming the advance of the heavens, thwarting the other’s envious gaze and ill will, calling for the mother or the nation.

“Born in 1960 in Lebanon, a country so absurd, so melted with ongoing problems,
so embedded with a history of war and survivals, I feel like I had lived many lives in the same time and many death too. 

Resurrection in art was my weapon, my meditation, my armor. Since my childhood, I knew that this would be my path, but the years of war which I grew up with, did not allow me to study properly my passion. 

I’m labeled a self-taught artist, which took my long years of working on my artistic expression, using various mediums to express different subjects. Since 2000 my observations and inspirations shifted towards memory, identity, and socio-political subjects that concerns us all, ongoing present life. 

Projects, ‘Of others’ 2011 ‘Generation war’ 2013 ‘Perpet- ual Identities’ 2018, and ‘Raje3a ya mama’ ‘Mother I’ll be back’, 2023, reflects our identity and my quest around this subject, life so far has been an interesting journey through artistic expression.“ -Katya Traboulsi