Christine Safa paints from memory. “Maybe it’s to preserve something that I am afraid is going to go away,” says the 32-year-old artist. She grew up in the western suburbs of Paris, but often returned to Lebanon, her parents’ home country, to see family in Beirut and spend holidays in the mountains and by the sea. Back in France, she painted the landscapes that stayed with her. “It’s [about] trying to remember a certain feeling, or how the sun was setting on my face in one particular moment,” she says.
Her latest solo show, opening Wednesday at New York’s Bortolami Gallery, is a meeting of Safa’s two worlds: Lebanon and the Paris suburbs, where she now lives with her husband and dog.