The sculpture in bas-relief Colours of Time interprets a motif from a colored archaeological drawing made by the artist during the emergency urban archeological excavation in downtown Beirut in the late 1990s. The sculpture codifies the tangle of several strata: Roman, Byzantine and Hellenistic. A different color is assigned to each one. The stratification extends into an ancestral past, prior to humans, as we move from archeology to geology. Another colored drawing was used as a motif and was reproduced on carpet BEY002, produced by the Manufacture des Gobelins, today on display at the French Embassy in Berlin. As opposed to contemporary presentism, Colours of Time expresses ground’s depth. Hence the technique of bas-relief, bringing the dialectics of surface and depth. Finally, colors become autonomous in order to constitute an abstraction. It is no longer an archeological document but an abstraction in a documentary style. Colours of Time was realized on the occasion of Taipei Biennal, Gestures and Archives of the Present, Genealogies of the Future, Taipei, Taiwan (2016-2017). Paola Yacoub is a visual artist. She is currently a PhD student in Aesthetics, Visual Art and Photography at University of Paris 8, Vincennes-Saint-Denis. She graduated from the Architectural Association in London where she has worked on automates in photography and architecture. Afterward she worked at IFPO’s archeological excavation in Beirut city center. In 2000, she began collaborating with Michel Lasserre on the perception of territories in conflict and post-conflict situations. Today, they work on effective action in the framework of a “proactionism.” Their public lectures and essays were brought together in the monograph Beirut is a Magnificent City. Synoptic Pictures (Fundació Antoni Tàpies, 2003). Yacoub and Lasserre have been awarded several grants and residencies, including the DAAD in Berlin in 2005. They have exhibited together in, amongst others, Kunst-Werke, Berlin (2000); Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, (2002); Le Plateau, Paris (2002); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2003); Venice Biennal (2003); Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine/Mamco Geneva (2004); Gwangju Biennal (2006); Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, (2008). Paola Yacoub’s solo exhibitions include: a retrospective, Drawing with the Things Themselves, at Beirut Art Center (2011); Kiss the black Stones at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2012); BEY002 at DAADGallery, Berlin (2021). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including The Pencil of Culture at Centre Pompidou (2016); the Taipei Biennale in Taiwan (2016); Home Beirut: Sounding the Neighbors at Maxxi in Rome (2017-2018); En Suspens at Le Bal in Paris (2018); and Sabine Weiss, les villes, la rue, l’autre at Centre Pompidou (2018), Distant Divides at Halle 14 - Zentrum für zeitgenössische kunst, Leipzig (2022). Paola Yacoub is the founding director of the program ARP (Artistic Research Practices, 2013-2018) at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Sursock Museum.