BEIRUT, Oct. 27 (Xinhua) -- For visual artist Lina Jouni, the shrapnel scattered across southern Lebanon is more than a remnant of war. In her hands, a jagged fragment of an Israeli missile becomes a Lebanese cedar, a flower or the image of a home.
In the southern village of Roumine in Nabatieh district, Jouni works beneath a pergola in her garden, with tree branches intertwining overhead. She collects metal fragments left by bombardment and transforms them into artworks that speak of memory, resilience and a commitment to life.
As she put the finishing touches to a metal sculpture, Jouni told Xinhua that the fragments were far more than discarded scraps.
"I do not treat these pieces as worthless remnants of metal. I see them as witnesses to what the people of the south have lived through, and to what happened to their homes, villages and loved ones," she said.
Her artistic project took shape after she returned to her home in Roumine following displacement during the 2024 war between Israel and Hezbollah. Finding pieces of iron and shrapnel scattered among the rubble, she decided to give them a new purpose.
"I decided to collect them and repurpose them in an artistic project that reflects my psychological response to what I experienced and gives what the war left behind a new meaning," she said.
Jouni examines each fragment's thickness, dimensions and curves to determine how best to reshape it. Using cutting, drilling and polishing tools, she gradually works the metal into shape before adding color and other elements. The process requires patience and physical effort as she experiments with bending and shaping the iron. So far, she has completed around 50 artworks.
Some of her works tell poignant stories of loss. One commemorates a mother killed alongside her two children, while another pays tribute to a man Jouni knew who was wounded multiple times before being killed.
Her most striking work began with a missile fragment that, she said, came from a missile that destroyed a three-story house in Nabatieh. She reshaped the metal into a Lebanese cedar, a tree deeply rooted in the country's national identity and long associated with resilience and continuity.
Jouni said art had given her a way to express the suffering of ordinary people, convey her views on what they had endured and affirm their determination to carry on.
"I do not claim that art can bring back the victims or erase the traces of destruction, but it can keep their stories from being forgotten and give people a space to express their losses and their determination to continue," she said.
Through her sculptures, Jouni tells a story of southern Lebanon that extends beyond its destroyed homes and landscapes to the determination of its people to remain rooted in their land.
For Jouni, the message is clear: "This is what I seek to achieve through works that make fragments a material for memory and creativity a means of confronting despair." ■
