The Lebanese wars of the past three decades affected Lebanon’s residents physically and psychologically: from the 100,000-plus who were killed; to the 200,000-plus who were wounded; to the 1,000,000-plus who were displaced; to the even more who were psychologically traumatized.

It is clear to me today that these wars also affected colors, lines, shapes, and forms. Some of these were affected in a material way, and, like burned books or razed monuments, were physically destroyed and lost forever; others, like looted treasure or politically compromised artworks, remain physically intact but are removed from view, possibly never to be seen again. And yet other colors, lines, shapes, and forms, sensing the forthcoming danger, have deployed defensive measures: they hide, take refuge, hibernate, camouflage, and/or dissimulate. I expected them to do so in the artworks of past artists, whose paintings and sculptures I thought would be their most hospitable hosts. I was wrong. Instead, colors, lines, shapes, and forms took refuge in unexpected places: they hid in Roman and Arabic letters and numbers; in circles, rectangles, and squares; in yellow, blue, and green. They dissimulated as fonts, covers, titles, and indices; as the graphic lines and footnotes of books; they camouflaged themselves as letters, price lists, dissertations, and catalogues; as diagrams and budgets. They hibernated not in but around artworks.

These are the colors, lines, shapes, and forms that compose the plates displayed here.