In a city of movement, survival, hardship, entrenched mindsets, and the need for reinvention, Tripoli speaks through those who create within it.
This first edition of Maajouka, a manifestation of artistic labor in Tripoli, exists because it must – not only to feature arts and its laborers, yet as a living archive, by those who challenge the status quo. It is an invitation to see the city through its own emerging and established contributing artists and writers. We ask you to notice what you think this collection invites you to do.
About Marsah
Marsah opened its doors to the public in December 2024. The name is extracted from a nearly forgotten word in Arabic that once meant “theater” or “a place designated for performance.” Over time, this word was replaced in common usage by “Masrah.” By reclaiming the term Marsah, we reclaim a word that carries the spirit of gathering, performing, and imagining collectively. The word “Marsah” embraces a sense of playfulness, a reminder that art is a form of play.
Marsah is a space for arts and knowledge in Tripoli. It fosters and nurtures both established and emerging artists, and develops resourceful networks of creation and knowledge sharing in Tripoli and its region. By creating a collective and space for artists to practice, collaborate, and to feature all genres of work, Marsah aims to activate a multidisciplinary creative process and output that reclaims the city’s right to culture and opens up new possibilities to revise the relationship between the place and its people. Marsah is a space where experimentation is a right, and the process is never overshadowed by the demands of the city’s conservatism. Marsah’s mandate is to function as a hub and a platform for artists from Tripoli to dwell at the intersection of arts and critical thought.
Why Maajouka?
“Maakouka” hums with sound and disorder. It is a word that describes the layered city overtaken by obsessive concrete, where the scent of oranges and open fields has been replaced by suburbs and an overwhelmed abandoned old city. Maajouka is also a sweet from Tripoli’s old kitchens, now found in just a few traditional shops tucked into the old city, a reminder that heritage is not stagnant, it carries a DNA we inherit, reinterpret, and offer forward in this issue.
The Marsah residency program was born out of a need to build a trail for artists in the city. A way to stimulate public life through artistic presence and production. Artists who navigate the city with so few resources are a powerful reminder of how the collective must exist. This marks our first attempt at working closely with eight Tripoli-based emerging artists on a trajectory of artistic exploration and production. Rather than impose fixed curatorial frames, we focused on allowing work and narratives to evolve organically. This journal reflects that approach, capturing artistic practice not as a finished product, but as an act of expression, of existence.
This edition of Maajouka is focused on featuring Marsah’s emerging artists-in-residence along with established contributing artists and writers from Tripoli. In this edition, we chose a different path, one rooted in process rather than prescription. There was no open call for submissions. The selection of the eight artists was grounded in our existing networks, those who expressed a clear interest in developing conceptual work for public exhibition. We embarked on an in-house journey of creation, shaped by a multidisciplinary and multi-voiced approach. The eight artists-in-residence, along with established contributing artists and writers from the city, grappled with work on three central themes: memory, identity, and personal truths.
The first theme, memory, asks: What is lost? What do we choose to remember? In these pages, you’ll enter layers of curiosity rather than nostalgia. The second theme, identity, reflects an ongoing inquiry: How do we exist within Tripoli, and how does Tripoli exist within us? And finally, the third theme centers on the personal story, a recognition that artistic labor, in all its forms, is storytelling.
The result is a body of work that spans visual, textual, and conceptual forms. Visual narratives unfold through comics, illustration, and design, each reinterpreting the city’s textures and tempo. Photography and mixed media pieces capture the shifting light and layered forms of Tripoli. And in the literary section, you’ll find poetry, fiction, and personal essays that give voice to what is often left lingering in the artist’s mind and wants to find a way out.
We leave you with this first edition and the trail it begins.
