Lara Dahabreh

Lara S Dahabreh obtained her BSc in Architecture from the Jordan University of Science and Technology in 2000. Although the last 16 years of her career were focused on architecture, art and painting have been a strong passion of hers from her childhood.

Lara has always been infatuated with the human body, interested in drawing people, their postures, facial expressions, physical needs, and their reactions to one another. She started with drawing people as they are, more of a still life approach. Gradually, the way she perceived humans evolved: their impressions on her and the way they made her feel about them and herself was what she drew. With three surgeons in her family, she started visualizing the human body as layers of skin, muscles, nerves, bones and joints, and started appreciating the magnificence of the human body and understanding how a single movement requires the complex collaboration of all these layers in order to produce a seemingly simple motion, such as a twist, a smile, or even a blink. That was the first turning point of her art.

Studying architecture was the second turning point. It’s the exact opposite of the free form of the body. There is always the grid holding the spaces together and there is always logic behind every line and every shape. Becoming an architect has made her more of a minimalist and the translation of that into her art has been through the use of black ink on white paper, with minimal use of color. The forms started searching for balance, and so did her art. In every painting, there is balance, whether in the forms, the contrast of black and white, or the introduction of minimal color to emphasize a form.

Lara had her first art exhibition at Zara Gallery in November 2016 and still remains a professional architect and has recently co-founded LDDH Design Studio, a private architecture and design firm.