Born in 1944 in the northern Lebanese village of Douma, Souleima Zod is a self-taught artist. Although she had enrolled in the Ecole ABC de Paris remotely, she grew tired of schooling through the mail and decided to explore painting without any form of formal education. In fact, Zod went on a journey of discovery: buying materials, experimenting, researching and studying on her own. 

The result of her self-driven artistic ventures were several phases of artistic production, starting with a series of works around veiled women. Eventually, Zod’s spiritism took over her works: she pondered upon the origin, nature and destiny of spirits, imagining where they go when they leave our dimension. Poetry is often a central part of her works: most recently, she has drawn inspiration from Sufi poet Al-Hallaj for her latest works.

Zod has illustrated books by Moussa Prince, Nada El Hage and Raymond Azar, drafted theater posters for multiple plays and a ballet called “Nashwa” by Georgette Gebara. Her works have been exhibited in Lebanon, Syria; the US; France and Bahrain. She has also participated in the Sursock Museum’s Salon d’Automne (1987, 1988 and 1991) as well as in the Salon d’Automne in the Grand Palais, Paris (1992). 

“Le Cantique des Cantiques” is a work by Souleima Zod in which she meditatively writes parts of the biblical poem “The Canticle of Canticles” (also known as Song of Songs), in which two lovers express their longing and desire to each other. Zod manipulates rays of white and yellow light and curves them to form the abstracted body of a woman in the center of the piece. All around are fragments of space and sky, varying in color and sometimes containing sections of the poem. Zod’s merging of spiritism and abstraction is perfectly harmonious: her canvases, the perfect tools to explore the cosmos.