Gibran Tarazi: The Square That Refused to Be a Frame

For Lebanese visual artist Gibran Tarazi, the square was not a closed geometric shape. In Shereen Farid’s reading of his work, it becomes a starting point for possibilities rather than a boundary that contains them.

Farid’s commentary centres on the relationship between the square and the lines surrounding it. Those lines, she suggests, were less an attempt to control space than a means of opening it up.

That distinction shifts the square’s role from enclosure to invitation. A form associated with fixed edges instead offers a way to look beyond them, challenging the idea that a frame must mark an endpoint.

The title of Farid’s piece — “The Square That Refused to Be a Frame” — captures this tension. Her interpretation presents Tarazi’s geometry as something open to reconsideration, with boundaries that create possibilities rather than close them off.