Exhibition Dates: October 16, 2026 – January 15, 2027

Hours: Monday – Friday | 12 – 6 PM

Opening: Friday, October 16 | 4 – 9 PM 

Afteruse

Ali Merhi’s practice is grounded in collection and assemblage. For Afteruse, he gathers everyday objects and materials around which life is improvised: food cans, oil and water containers, furniture both usable and broken, and fragments whose original functions have been exhausted. These belong to informal economies of maintenance that shape the urban environment, where things are repaired and returned to circulation. Merhi brings them into the studio, where they are transformed into various structures. Some are drawn or collated into wooden frames, acquiring a pictorial, painterly life of their own; others take on peculiar sculptural forms, or resemble musical instruments. Each is fitted with a motor that sets it into movement, producing vibration and noise. We hear a stringent cacophony, something akin to a cry of refusal. Their mechanisms extend these histories of use and wear; they lend the objects and materials a new life.

Ali Merhi (b. 2000) lives and works in Beirut. His work spans painting and sculpture, engaging with the built environment and objects of mundane utility through imaginative and critical forms of transformation. He is a graduate of the Lebanese University and an alumnus of the Home Workspace Program.