Following its presentation at the Québec City Biennial, Handle with Care, an installation by Lebanese-Canadian artist Elias Nafaa, transforms a sense of powerlessness into a physical encounter with the mechanisms of violence. Now on view at MUZEU in Braga, Portugal, until October 17, Nafaa turns the tables on the instruments of war, rendering them fragile objects that confront the viewer with the hostility they embody.
Since October 2023, Lebanon has been experiencing successive escalations of violence, with a daily landscape marked by the constant buzzing of drones, blasts and shattered glass. Living in Canada at the time, Elias Nafaa experienced this violence from a distance, a perspective that later became part of the work itself.
In his construction, the weapons are shrunk, put into a place where “we would be the ones looking down at them”, a reversal of power. The installation consists of three hundred replicas of weapons used in the conflict, scaled according to their documented frequency of use and accompanied by a sound composition that approaches violence without reproducing it directly. Together, the weapons become a mass, a landscape of war. Yet, Nafaa does not describe it as a political statement, but as a “very tender gesture”, a way of looking at violence differently and of creating a form of contemplation that goes beyond the numbers and images through which war is usually mediated.
Irony takes over the title Handle with Care when, at the time of the interview, the main components of the installation had not yet arrived in Braga. Customs spent considerable time determining the potential danger of the resin models, something that, as Nafaa points out, does not happen when the objects being shipped and delivered are the actual weapons.
Could you tell me a little bit about how Handle with Care began? Did you have a clear idea of the work from the beginning, or did it reveal itself as you were making it?
I left Lebanon in 2023 for many reasons, but also because of the situation there. In 2024, the violence continued to intensify, with the destruction of the south and Beirut. By the end of 2024 it was very intense. But I was in Canada. I was not there with my friends and family, and my experience of this violence was mainly from abroad, through the circulation of images. That made me want to make a symbolic gesture. My impulse was: what if I could inflict on these weapons the same violence they are inflicting on us? So, instead of them looking down at us, we would be the ones looking down at them. Instead of allowing them to destroy buildings and break glass, which was mainly what I was seeing, I wanted to make them out of the fragile, glass-like materials they were destroying. That’s why I used resin. It looks somewhere between glass and ice. I was seeing it from Québec, surrounded by these winter landscapes, and they reminded me of the violence as well. There was this whole dynamic that happened.
At the same time, I started researching the geometry. So, in the space, there are three hundred forms of weapons, three hundred out of around eighteen thousand that had been used in Lebanon by the Israeli army at the time. Now, I think it’s over twenty thousand. We are talking about a span of two to three years, and the violence is still ongoing.
At the same time, I started researching the geometry. So, in the space, there are three hundred forms of weapons, three hundred out of around eighteen thousand that had been used in Lebanon by the Israeli army at the time. Now, I think it’s over twenty thousand. We are talking about a span of two to three years, and the violence is still ongoing.
What about the weapons? How did you choose which ones to include?
I selected six weapons that were used the most. They are presented in the space proportionally to how much each one was used. The smaller ones appear more often because they were used most often, while the bigger ones appear less, partly because they are also more expensive. The smallest one is forty centimetres in the space, but eighty centimetres in real life. The largest is ninety centimetres in the space, but five metres in real life. They are all scaled down.
Each one is designed to inflict a specific form of violence. The smaller ones, the artillery shells, are used against specific targets, like a car or a person. Then there are cluster munitions. They don’t explode, but they contain submunitions that can remain long after the initial strike. They are used to destroy wider areas. A lot of countries have signed treaties prohibiting their use because some of the submunitions can remain unexploded and detonate years later. Then there is white phosphorus, the use of which in civilian areas is prohibited under international law, but which the Israeli army uses. White phosphorus is a substance that burns when it comes in contact with the skin, but it is also used on the land to poison it, particularly in southern Lebanon. It makes the land infertile. In an area where there is a lot of agriculture, the destruction is not only about buildings and people; it also forces people to leave because of the poisoned land. The JDAM is an attachment that can turn a conventional bomb into one that is able to be directed toward targets. One of them is a bunker buster, designed to destroy what is underneath a building by targeting underground floors. The bigger ones are Rampage missiles, which are generally launched from a distance. They are relatively new.
The work is looking at the whole economy of violence, but also the design of violence itself. The space presents three hundred of them, but not just as a sample. I was mainly interested in reaching a threshold that creates a certain intensity in the space, after which you start to question this idea of repetition, and at what point violence has become so normalised and accepted.
Each one is designed to inflict a specific form of violence. The smaller ones, the artillery shells, are used against specific targets, like a car or a person. Then there are cluster munitions. They don’t explode, but they contain submunitions that can remain long after the initial strike. They are used to destroy wider areas. A lot of countries have signed treaties prohibiting their use because some of the submunitions can remain unexploded and detonate years later. Then there is white phosphorus, the use of which in civilian areas is prohibited under international law, but which the Israeli army uses. White phosphorus is a substance that burns when it comes in contact with the skin, but it is also used on the land to poison it, particularly in southern Lebanon. It makes the land infertile. In an area where there is a lot of agriculture, the destruction is not only about buildings and people; it also forces people to leave because of the poisoned land. The JDAM is an attachment that can turn a conventional bomb into one that is able to be directed toward targets. One of them is a bunker buster, designed to destroy what is underneath a building by targeting underground floors. The bigger ones are Rampage missiles, which are generally launched from a distance. They are relatively new.
The work is looking at the whole economy of violence, but also the design of violence itself. The space presents three hundred of them, but not just as a sample. I was mainly interested in reaching a threshold that creates a certain intensity in the space, after which you start to question this idea of repetition, and at what point violence has become so normalised and accepted.
How did the sound come into the work?
It’s the seventh element. The materiality of the sound is important because you kind of see a form in the space that fades away. You’re not able to identify the weapons. This was very important for me because I didn’t want to glamourise them. That’s also why the lighting is indirect, rather than directly exposing them. They kind of disappear and play with your perception. You can see their footprint and their repetition, but you don’t necessarily see the actual weapon.
For the sound, I worked with Cynthia Zaven, a Lebanon-based composer and artist. We wanted to look at forms of psychological violence: the evacuation warnings, the drones that are constantly present and become part of everyday life, or sonic booms, the sounds produced when a plane breaks the sound barrier. All these tools of psychological abuse.
But at the same time, as I did with the sculptures, I didn’t want to import the violence into the space. I didn’t want people to come and hear the sounds of bombs. Instead, we looked at the ground, which is absorbing all of this violence and trying to resist it. So she composed Tender Grounds, which is the name of the composition. You can hear impacts on the ground coming through. There are water sounds at some point, and church bells. There are all these different elements, and we also used sounds from actual bombings, but they were abstracted to the point where you don’t really recognise them.
For the sound, I worked with Cynthia Zaven, a Lebanon-based composer and artist. We wanted to look at forms of psychological violence: the evacuation warnings, the drones that are constantly present and become part of everyday life, or sonic booms, the sounds produced when a plane breaks the sound barrier. All these tools of psychological abuse.
But at the same time, as I did with the sculptures, I didn’t want to import the violence into the space. I didn’t want people to come and hear the sounds of bombs. Instead, we looked at the ground, which is absorbing all of this violence and trying to resist it. So she composed Tender Grounds, which is the name of the composition. You can hear impacts on the ground coming through. There are water sounds at some point, and church bells. There are all these different elements, and we also used sounds from actual bombings, but they were abstracted to the point where you don’t really recognise them.
The research behind the work is incredibly precise. What was that process like for you?
I think it started with what I had in my photo library. When you look at the news, you see a lot of these videos, so I slowly began identifying the types of weapons I would see most frequently, and then I researched them through news or reports. I specifically included all of the research materials in the booklets to make it very accessible to everyone. They can see all the references I used for the identification process, as well as information about which types were used and where. There were also wider mapping techniques that were publicly available. For example, the AUB, the American University of Beirut, and the Beirut Urban Lab produced visualisations, one of which is included in the work, that look at the exchange from Lebanon to other territories and show the proportionality of attacks. In making that mapping, they also built a platform that documents every day where each attack was on Lebanese territory. The data they used came from ACLED, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data. It is an organisation registered in the US that maps all the armed conflicts around the world. There is also a Human Rights Watch report on the use of white phosphorus in Lebanon. So, there was a lot of research and investigation, but at the same time, much of this information was already available. I’m making it available in a way that goes beyond the numbers, which can desensitise people to the reality behind them. In this space you have a confrontation with these objects. There are three hundred of them, but they are scaled down, so there is also a form of interaction that goes beyond the documents and the data.
The title Handle with Care seems to carry a certain irony. What, for you, needs to be handled with care here: the objects, the lives they represent, or our relationship to violence?
That’s interesting. So, it’s a play on the circulation of these objects. Weapons are shipped with a lot of care, like any other commodity, and they circulate freely. There’s an entire economy, from their conception and design to their production, circulation, and use. There’s an irony in handling with care something that causes so much violence. There’s also an irony in the work not being here because, apparently, it is considered more dangerous than the actual weapons.
The work is really about the tools that enable this form of violence, and about their circulation and conception. These are objects that are handled with a great deal of care, and I think that also comes with the vocabulary of defence and protection, or the language of military violence, which can end up doing the exact opposite. That is something I’m also interested in within my practice: the idea of how care can replicate harm, and how sometimes it can tip into corruption or violence.
The work is really about the tools that enable this form of violence, and about their circulation and conception. These are objects that are handled with a great deal of care, and I think that also comes with the vocabulary of defence and protection, or the language of military violence, which can end up doing the exact opposite. That is something I’m also interested in within my practice: the idea of how care can replicate harm, and how sometimes it can tip into corruption or violence.
The work feels ultimately about human lives, but there are no human figures. Why was that absence important to you?
I was more interested in the mechanisms that enable these forms of violence, violence that happens to people, but also to buildings, the land, and all the different components of life. When you look at the weapons themselves, you can begin to understand what each is used for and what kind of violence it produces. They create a more global form of a landscape. That’s how I wanted to approach the subject.
“The work is looking at the whole economy of violence, but also the design of violence itself.”
The installation is visually striking at first, until you realise what the objects represent. Was that tension deliberate?
It’s a form of confrontation because this violence is very fetishised. It was also something I was conscious of. I didn’t want people to think, these are beautiful weapons, which is why you can’t really see them in the space. They kind of become this whole mass. But I think it’s interesting to be confronted with something that is related to violence, and to think about the double standards in the way it is talked about. I think that is replicated in the experience of the work, even though I tried to tame it as much as possible.
Is that moment of realisation something you had in mind when you made the work?
Yeah. What I’ve noticed is that people are very scared to come close to it. When they enter the space, a lot of them walk very far. They try to see the objects, but then find it difficult because the forms start to disappear. The weapons are hollow on the inside, so it wasn’t just a process of conversion or dematerialisation. I was also stripping them of the mechanisms that make them functional, which also creates this kind of translucent effect. So even when you try to confront them, you have a hard time perceiving them.
The thing is, this work is not just about the current war. It’s about all the previous ones and all the future ones to come. It kind of exists across all these temporalities. It keeps taking on new forms because violence is ongoing.
The thing is, this work is not just about the current war. It’s about all the previous ones and all the future ones to come. It kind of exists across all these temporalities. It keeps taking on new forms because violence is ongoing.
How do you experience war from a distance? Do you feel guilt or responsibility for being away?
It comes with living abroad. You feel the guilt of not being able to be with your friends and family and support everyone. But at the same time, to what extent can you control the violence? There is a sense of powerlessness that comes with being away. It’s very debilitating. The work comes from that experience, from transforming it into a project that can dissect all of this reality. And I think the project speaks to that experience.
As you said before, we are constantly exposed to violence, to the point where we’ve become desensitised. Was resisting that kind of numbness part of what you wanted the work to do?
It’s a way to give it a different form, maybe making it more accessible, or making it out of something else that the information itself is not doing. Because right now, the images are not doing anything in the world. You need to confront it physically, in a space, to really see it.
The installation was first presented in Québec. How was it received there?
It was very positive. But when the Québec City Biennial opened, the violence kind of re-emerged more strongly, with the US attacks and Israel attacking Lebanon again, more intensely. The reception to this type of work has been very positive because it speaks to the present and to everything that is unfolding. It’s also a work that gives people access to a lot of research and source material, because sometimes we have information that is very complex, very documented, but that people might not otherwise have access to.
How did the idea of bringing the work to Braga come about? How do you feel about showing it in this political context?
You know, there’s a lot of irony in having a very political work in a very political place not being here. Actually, I don’t think of it as a very political work, but rather as a very tender gesture that reveals information differently and makes you confront it.
