Nelsy Massoud’s sculpture titled Metamorphosis expands on the transformative aspect of the being. Existence is performative and metamorphic, entailing a constant assertion of the being through the mutability of the self. Similarly, “caterpillars turn into butterflies,” or when “materials take new forms,” the structural loofahs bare new life forms.
Born and raised in Lebanon in 1957, Nelsy Massoud first moved to Ivory Coast for four years before residing in New York for 23 years, where she learned glass mosaic and became the assistant of a master mosaicist Val. After a few open house exhibitions in New York, Massoud moved to Montreal, where she opened a gallery and workshop of mosaic for students, before coming back to Beirut in 20005. For five years, she was a manager and curator at 392 Rmeil 393 gallery in Beirut. In her exploration of various media, such as sand, polythene or glass, Massoud found a particular interest in the intertwining of light and colors in loofahs.