I chose chess because it is a game of strategy, with fixed rules but infinite possibilities—unlike Beirut, which every day resists both order and chaos through a thousand stratagems. One of these is precisely the transformation of construction tools and everyday objects into chess pieces, turning them into precious symbols. This act highlights an essential characteristic of the city: the attention to the appearance of what, in reality, is continuously built and self-destructed, depending on necessity. In Beirut, power is fluid, capable of changing form, playing at shifting positions.

On my chessboard, the kings are not opponents but allies. Here, the game is not won with checkmate—the goal is not to eliminate the king but to allow power to transform in order to survive. The kings, in fact, stand outside the board, watching the moves from afar. The tiles can open up like escape routes. The king may be present or vanish into nothingness—sometimes in silence, sometimes with a deafening roar. Power shifts from hand to hand, moving from politics to extremists, from foreign influences to ordinary people, and for this reason, the installation adapts and transforms in the same way the city does. Pain and explosions coexist with the daily life of those who continue to resist, while beauty—fleeting and fragile—hides, if only for a moment, the relentless destruction and reconstruction that define Beirut.

This unstable balance is the paradox that keeps the city standing, a contradiction made evident by the wheels on which the entire chessboard rests. Moving in opposite directions, they make the game nearly impossible, forcing the territory to regenerate endlessly, to give birth to itself every day.