Magnolia Nights

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MAR 2025 Program highlights Talks, Performances, workshops and Community Events

An intimate series of gatherings animates this year’s theme, INDIVIDUAL STORIES MATTER, where stories acknowledge the power of personal narratives to build a strong community based on justice and openness. 

Resident-Led Initiatives MAR invited its residents to curate an evening of their choice, including sharing work, organizing a dinner, or hosting an open discussion. 

On July 11, 2025, Davina Maria, a documentary filmmaker from Beirut. Her work explores love, pain, and the fragility of the human condition through a poetic and intimate lens. Holding an MA from the DOC NOMADS program, her films have been selected and awarded at prestigious international festivals. 

On August 8, 2025, Deema Kaedbey, co-founder and director of the Knowledge Workshop (Beirut), and Mona Ayoub, a craft artist and human ecologist from Lebanon. Their contributions highlighted feminist practices, land-based craft, and collaborative artistic processes. 

On September 9, 2025, Nadeen Gorez Aldeen & Elsie Haddad Elsie Haddad is a Lebanese documentary photographer based in Beirut. Her work focuses on themes of memory, people, and personal narratives, with a particular interest in the social and cultural dimensions of human experience and the ways in which they intersect. 

Nadeen Gorez Aldeen a fine artist from the Golan Heights (Syria occupied territory). Born in 1994, she studied at the University of Haifa. Her practice focuses on installation and ready-made arts using recycled and found materials.

On September 27, 2025 Installation by Nadeen Gorez Aldeen 

Workshops and Community Engagement 

On August 31, 2025, MAR hosted a plastering and mosaic workshop led by resident artist and human ecologist Mona Ayoub.

Dinners & Stories 

On July 11, 2025 with El Goofy (Egypt–Lesbos) 

On July 12, 2025 With Shaluwa GM (Uganda–Lesbos) 

On September 11, 2025 with Massoud (Iran-Lesbos) 

Open Mic Nights 

Open mic events allow participants to share music, poetry, comedy, readings, and live art. The garden fosters conversations on migration, feminism, gender, art, geopolitics, and sexuality. 

On July 12, 2025 Special guest El Goofy (Egypt–Lesbos) 

On September 11, 2025 Special guest Sahr GM (Africa – Lesbos) 

Video-Movie Screenings

MAR presented a series of free weekly evening screenings featuring artists from the Arab world and beyond. 

• Foragers by Jumana Manna (65', 2022) Foragers depicts the dramas around the practice of foraging for wild edible plants in Palestine/Israel with wry humor and a meditative pace. In partnership with Sappho Academy 

• Photography Lies (But I Have Other Romantic Ideas) (5’16) by Jeanne et Moreau, a visual digital poem exploring love, longing, and desire in the digital era. 

• #CrisisBillboards (2020–2024) (22’51) by Randa Mirza, a video installation reflecting Lebanon’s economic crisis and the social consequences of financial collapse. 

• When-It-Stopped-Being-a-War: The Situated Testimony of Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah (24’) by Forensic Architecture, documenting experiences in conflict contexts. 

• Une image douce et tendre by Davina Maria (2023, 20’ documentary) 

• Behind the Shield by Sirine Fattouh (2022, 57’) Throughout 2025, MAR fostered artistic experimentation, community engagement, and critical reflection through a combination of talks, performances, workshops, and screenings. These programs strengthened connections between residents, locals and displaced communities as well as international audiences. We will conclude 2025 with a Fundraising, by our Artists mutual aid platform, to finish 2025 and begin 2026 without any budget debit.