Visual artist, performer, and DJ Nasri Sayegh Jr. discusses his practice and the profound influence of music on his work and life at Quoz Arts Fest 2026. He opens by sharing the urgent, improvised creation of his installation for the festival, "You Ain't Never Been Blue," which features 100 suns drawn in one night in Beirut. He speaks candidly about the two-year hiatus he took from producing art due to the painful situation in Gaza and Lebanon, exploring the existential question of what art means today. He describes the daily struggle of making the emotional journey from his kitchen to his studio—a distance that felt like "crossing hundreds of kilometers" since October 7. The conversation also delves into his deep connection with music, exemplified by his creation of the community platform radiokarantina during the 2020 pandemic. The platform, named after an area in Beirut, grew from a simple joke among friends to a large party with mixes contributed globally, serving as a vital space for connection during periods of violence and uncertainty in Lebanon and Palestine. Nasri shares the music that shapes his soul, featuring tracks from Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, and the Rahbani Brothers, and reflects on the enduring role of Fairuz in the Lebanese soundscape.
00:09 afikra's Collaboration With Quoz Arts Fest for a Second Year
01:19 Nasri's Improvisational Visual Art
02:23 The Struggle to Create Amidst Pain
04:36 His Mural "You Ain't Never Been Blue"
07:22 Music as Perpetual Presence and Addiction
08:21 radiokarantina: A Pandemic Party and Meeting Place
12:08 Nina Simone and the Power of Mood Indigo
14:23 Billie Holiday: Sublime Voice Over Pain
15:18 Fairuz and Adoration for the Rahbani Brothers
17:30 Yasmine Hamdan and the Birth of Soapkills
Nasri Sayegh approaches his practice as a way to reassemble what resists erasure. A Lebanese visual artist, writer, DJ, embroiderer, and performer, he works across photography, video, embroidery, text, and objects to interrogate the construction and deconstruction of memory. Excavating archives – family, official, and beyond – he composes visual constellations that evoke an atlas or cabinet of memory. Central to this process is embroidery, which Sayegh envisions as both a suture and a queer gesture of reparation, weaving delicately between absence and recollection, amnesia and resistance. His multidisciplinary works propose a fragile museum where text and image, stitch and pixel converge. He's also behind radiokarantina.
Connect with Nasri Sayegh 👉 https://instagram.com/nasrisays
Hosted by Mikey Muhanna 👉 https://instagram.com/mikey_mu
Theme music: Peninsular, Tarek Yamani 🔊
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