Christine Tohmé has spent nearly three decades forging platforms where art, ideas, and discourse converge—right in the heart of Beirut, a city that itself is both canvas and crucible. Born in February 1964, she came of age amid Lebanon’s civil war, a period that taught her firsthand the fragility of public space and the urgency of dialogue. After earning her BA in English Literature at the American University of Beirut (1984) and, later, an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London (2007), she returned to her wounded hometown with a clear mission: to build an institution where artists could make work, thinkers could debate it, and communities could gather to reimagine their shared future.
In 1993, alongside artists Marwan Rechmaoui, Rania Tabbara, Mustapha Yamout, and Leila Mroueh, Tohmé founded Ashkal Alwan—literally “Forms and Colors”—as a non-profit “alternative platform” for contemporary artistic practice in Lebanon. What began in a small, repurposed industrial loft would evolve into an organization celebrated for incubating a generation of Arab artists and curators. From the start, Tohmé insisted that Ashkal Alwan be more than a gallery: it would host exhibitions, workshops, screenings, performances, and ultimately a decade-long experimental curriculum for emerging practitioners.
By 2001, Tohmé had launched the first Home Works: A Forum on Cultural Practices, a triennial gathering that blurred the lines between exhibition, symposium, and performance festival. Under her direction, Home Works expanded to include lectures, artist talks, dance and music performances, and live screenings—each edition explicitly designed to challenge orthodoxies of art and spark collaborations across disciplines and borders. Over eight editions, Home Works became Beirut’s most vital cultural event, drawing hundreds of local and international participants to discuss topics ranging from post-war urbanism to digital sovereignty.
Parallel to these public forums, Tohmé developed the Home Workspace Program (HWP) in 2002—a year-long, tuition-free curriculum enrolling 10–15 fellows annually. Rejecting the rigidity of traditional art schools, HWP invited guest professors from diverse fields—filmmakers, architects, sociologists—to mentor participants in critical theory, production, and self-organization. In the converted warehouses of Beirut’s Hamra district, fellows learned to produce video installations, curate pop-up exhibitions, and even host public debates, all while navigating the logistical challenges of a city still littered with conflict’s debris.
When the 2006 Lebanon War again displaced communities, Ashkal Alwan’s studios became emergency hubs—hosting refugee-led workshops and serving as headquarters for grassroots relief efforts. Tohmé personally coordinated relief drives, using Ashkal Alwan’s networks to funnel supplies to besieged neighborhoods. These experiences deepened her conviction that art institutions must be adaptable social actors, capable of responding to crises while maintaining the experimental spirit at their core.
In 2017, Tohmé took on the curatorial mantle for Sharjah Biennial 13: Tamawuj, delivering a five-act program that spanned exhibitions in the UAE and Beirut, traveling projects in Dakar and Ramallah, and an online platform for cross-continental publishing. Tamawuj—Arabic for “waves”—embodied the biennial’s fluid approach: it invited artists to respond to shifting geographies and the currents of history through multimedia installations, performance interventions, and community-centered workshops. Critics praised the biennial’s refusal to remain tethered to a single site or theme, crediting Tohmé’s vision for expanding the possibilities of what a biennial could be.
Beyond programming, Tohmé has steadfastly championed institutional transparency and accountability. When Ashkal Alwan faced funding challenges in the late 2000s, she instituted open-budget forums, inviting artists and community members to review expenditures and propose new revenue streams. This participatory model reinforced trust at a time when many Lebanese organizations struggled with opaque governance. It also laid the groundwork for partnerships with global foundations—like the Prince Claus Fund, which honored her with the Prince Claus Award in 2006, and UNESCO, which granted her the Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture in 2018.
Tohme’s advocacy extends into social welfare. She serves on the boards of Marsa, a Beirut sexual-health clinic for at-risk youth, and Haven for Artists, which provides legal and financial assistance to creative practitioners in precarious situations. She co-founded MeetCouncil, an NGO promoting cross-border cultural exchange, and mentors emerging curators through residencies at institutions like CCS Bard and Independent Curators International.
Her personal approach to leadership is informed by a belief in mutuality. “Curating is not about imposing a vision,” she told Frieze magazine in 2017. “It’s about creating the conditions where artists can surprise you.” This ethos manifests in Ashkal Alwan’s evolving architecture: workshops emerge organically from artist proposals; dialogues are logged and published as open-access zines; performance spaces double as cafés for impromptu gatherings.
As Lebanon grapples with economic collapse and political upheaval, Tohmé has mobilized Ashkal Alwan to serve as a lifeline. In 2020, when the Beirut port explosion devastated the city, the association’s DAMM space—renovated just weeks earlier—opened its doors as a triage center, distributing meals and mental-health support to survivors. Meanwhile, the Home Workspace Program shifted online, ensuring that sanctions and hyperinflation could not silence its fellows’ creative work.
Today, at 61, Christine Tohmé remains the nexus of a vast network of artists, thinkers, and activists stretching from Beirut’s rubble-strewn alleys to museum halls in New York and Berlin. Under her guidance, Ashkal Alwan has produced hundreds of exhibitions, supported thousands of artists through residencies and grants, and published dozens of critical texts amplifying voices from the Global South. Yet she measures impact not by totals, but by moments: a student’s first solo show; a community-led installation in a neglected public square; a cross-cultural dialogue sparked by a single image.
In Tohmé’s conception, culture is a site of possibility—a place where narratives can be rewritten and collective futures imagined. As Lebanon enters yet another phase of uncertainty, her model—anchored in adaptability, participation, and critical inquiry—offers a powerful antidote to despair. If art can be a form of resistance, Ashkal Alwan stands as its most resilient outpost, charting waves of innovation across a region yearning for spaces to breathe, think, and create.
