Emotional Dissonance · 2024 – 2026 · Beirut
Sculptures
Movement I · 7 works
Proximity
Two bodies at close range. Weight shared, and the small failures inside that sharing.
Movement II · 7 works
The Measure Between
Distance as a material. Balance, asymmetry, and the thin line that still connects.
Movement III · 4 works
Trust and Its Opposite
What is offered, what is concealed, and the vulnerability that both require.
Movement IV · 6 works
Substitutes for Company
The animal, the walk, the open sky. Solitude furnished with something to hold.
Movement V · 6 works
The Wider Contract
The crowd, the market, the altar. Relationships arranged by systems rather than by people.
The series
Emotional Dissonance
When I stood a clear mirror before you,
Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam, 1926
you gazed into me, and saw your image.
Then you said, ‘I love you.’
But in truth you loved yourself in me.
I agree with Gibran. And I add one thing: the first relationship is the one with yourself. Everything else comes through it. If you don’t know the one who is looking, you will love the mirror and call it another person.
What are we? A gathering of emotions and experiences. That’s it. We can’t step out of them. We try to stand in someone else’s shoes, and it is still our perspective, in their shoes.
This series lives in the space between. Between two lovers. Between a people and the power that arranges their lives. Between a believer and the answer. The gesture is only the skin. I go under it: the fear, the need, the small lie, the second of trust.
I chose the material on purpose. Stainless steel: the same inside and out, nothing to hide. It resists. It stays. Like those who truly love this country, who resist everything, and stay.
The granite is recycled, and not only for the earth. It is permanence, rebirth, rebuilding: a stone that was something else, beginning again. One is bright, one is dark, and each answers the other.
I don’t judge. I don’t explain a sculpture first. Look, and tell me what you see.
— Elio Y. Haddad, Beirut, 2024–2026
For galleries, curators & collectors
Catalogue, availability and studio visits.
The complete series is documented in a 37-page catalogue with dimensions for every work. Write for availability, a price list, loans or a visit to the Beirut studio.
