KYIV – VENICE: Hala Shukeir in dialogue with Antoni Banitska

Nature’s Will

https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2026/hala-schoukair

In the works of Lebanese artist Hala Schoukair, nature ceases to be a backdrop to human life. Leaves, flowers, rainfall, and the movement of insects become the very environment where attentiveness to the world, and to oneself, takes shape. Drawing on childhood memories of Lebanon’s forests, Schoukair presents art, memory, and care as inseparable processes. Her paintings offer a space for inner restoration, where each work becomes a window onto one’s own experience.

A similar approach resonates in the practice of Antonia Banitska. Her works also emerge from an attentive coexistence with living matter, though shaped by the experience of physical vulnerability. Bio-textiles cultivated from a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY) become not merely an artistic medium but an active participant in the creative process. Banitska’s works testify to life’s capacity for renewal even after destruction. For both artists, nature is not an object of contemplation but a space of coexistence, where transformation, memory, and regeneration become the language of art.