The Poetry of the Unseen

CIFRA presents Nour Ouayda: The Poetry of the Unseen, a curated program highlighting the work of Lebanese filmmaker and artist Nour Ouayda. Considering cinema as a space where memory is revisited and reshaped, Ouayda develops films that reflect on perception, recollection, and the traces images carry over time. The program gathers works produced between 2019 and 2023 and introduces audiences to the artist’s distinctive cinematic approach.

Ouayda works across film, voice, and written language, bringing these elements together without privileging one over another. Her films allow images, sounds, and words to circulate in loose constellations. Voices drift in like remembered thoughts, images emerge cautiously, and meaning arises from the tension between fragments, silences, and incomplete gestures. The films move slowly, holding space for uncertainty. Within them, memory feels provisional, documentary images appear fragile, and political contexts surface indirectly—through environments, disruptions, and what remains outside direct articulation. Complexity is conveyed through atmosphere and pacing rather than dramatic emphasis.

The exhibition unfolds as a sequence with its own internal rhythm. It begins with works grounded in everyday observation and quiet proximity, then gradually opens toward more layered narrative structures. Toward the end, the program turns to films shaped by interruption, absence, and reflection, creating a shift from closeness to distance.

The program includes the films Every Morning (2021), The Secret Garden (2023), One Sea, 10 Seas (2019), Towards the Sun (2019), I Was Grateful the Wind Tore Out My Camera’s Microphone (2020), and Not All Things That Shine Are Beautiful (2022).

Across these works, Ouayda treats cinema as a field of attention where meaning forms gradually. Connections emerge between images, between films, and through the viewer’s own process of looking and listening. Watching becomes a practice of attunement—sensitive to pauses, ambient sounds, and the subtle shifts that occur before interpretation takes hold.

The exhibition is available for viewing on the CIFRA platform from March 3 to April 14.