Elias Nafaa is an  artist, architect, and researcher working between Montréal and Beirut. Through sculpture, moving-image essays, and archival interventions, he examines how infrastructures of protection can mirror the very violence they claim to avert. Navigating the fragile line where acts of care tip into coercion, Nafaa translates states of emergency into charged material and narrative forms.

A graduate of Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace Program, he is part of the Public Programs team at the Canadian Centre for Architecture and a 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale Fellow (Canada Council for the Arts). His work has been presented at Galerie Tanit (Beirut) and the Institut du monde arabe (Paris), with a forthcoming presentation at Manif d’art, Québec Biennale (Québec City). It is held in the collections of the Institut du monde arabe (Donation Claude & France Lemand), the Dalloul Art Foundation, and the Beirut Museum of Art.





The Act of Impulsively Claiming Space Performance
El Mina, Tripoli, Lebanon
2021

Photo documentation, 2021
Black-and-white analog photographs, shot on a 35 mm panoramic film camera. 9 sequences.

The Act of Impulsively Claiming Space documents Elias Nafaa working on his drawing series Impulsions. The performative act is recorded as nine panoramic sequences, photographed and developed by architect and photographer Elie Elkhoury. 

The series was produced during Work in Process, an artist-led residency in El Mina, Tripoli (Lebanon), in August 2021, supported by Mophradat.
© 2026 Elias Nafaa Montréal / Beirut