The Thunder is Loud and Rolling Exhibition

If the noise made by thunder is long and rolling (called جاروش), it is regarded as a sign of bad weather. (Edward Robertson, Arab Weather Prognostics, 1930)

It is likely that the astrological almanac that became common folk knowledge in the Levant region, Kitab al Anwa’, passed from India to Yemen into what is now the southern region of Lebanon. Its wisdom advises a constant attention to the stars to understand the comings and goings of rain, the proper time to sow seeds, the natures of the wind, the most fruitful breeding seasons, as well as many other considerations for successful land stewardship. Some of this knowledge was used not just to predict but to influence and negotiate with the stars. Through ritual, talisman making, and the consultation of elaborate calculations, it became possible to plan one’s intentions in alignment with cosmic caprice.

In this exhibition, we trace the evolution of this relationship between ground and sky in southern Lebanon to illuminate how cosmic literacy persists as both a site of interpretation and a practice of worldmaking, shaping new attachments to land even as it is shaped by the violence of conquest. Throughout, we refer to this region as Jabal ‘Amil, foregrounding it as a socially and politically produced landscape rather than the colonially inherited designation of “South Lebanon.” Rather than being simply sited within it, the works in this exhibition emerge from Jabal ‘Amil, flanked by Mount Hermon to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Across Jabal ‘Amil, the persistent drone of Israeli surveillance machinery such as the Hermes 450 and 900 drones colloquially known as “Umm Kamel” and “Al Fassada”—their humming timbre, their capacity to eavesdrop and harvest data, and their saturation of the aerial commons—generates a visual and sonic horizon that reconstructs spatial legibility and everyday practices of movement and dwelling. These militarized acoustic signals, often hovering at the threshold of audibility, register as an index of imperial violence and participate in the gradual erosion of the material and spatial conditions of everyday life.

The militarization of the sky has forced this negotiation to evolve within a contested epistemic field in which the work of interpretation is sharpened against the grain of aerial warfare, surveillance, and permanent illumination. Against this grammar persists a slower lexicon of negotiation where cosmic bodies (ancient and new) continue to organize the seasonal, agricultural, and ritual life of communities. What emerges is a doubled cosmology: at once shadowed by the technologies of war and sustained through vernacular practices of reading, tending, and resisting.

From this fractured sky/soil condition emerge new techniques for navigating land stewardship: it is listening to the seconds between sounds and seeing futures on local terms, severed from regimes of imperial illumination. This exhibition brings together practitioners confronting the fraught conditions shaping Jabal ‘Amil today, where earth and sky emerge as sites of struggle and fields of possibility. While older negotiations with the environment persist, agricultural life must now calibrate between a high-tech occupation overhead and an enduring fidelity to land and harvest below, giving rise to spatial and cultural practices that unsettle any easy division between war and peace. In their drawings, EcoRove and Mohamad Nahleh render this entanglement legible, tracing how militarization is at once eclipsed and reimagined through an insistence on a shared, postcolonial future. Through sound installation and ceramic bells, Ghida Anouti and Jess Myers tune the space to the enduring temporalities of land and for the strained listening that occurs in the fragile timing of safety and seasonal order.

About the Team

Ghida Anouti
Curator, Assistant Professor of Architecture
Ghida Anouti is the 2025–26 Trott Distinguished Visiting Professor at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School. In her research, she thinks with and across sound, attending to sonic ways of being in the world. She examines how media technologies and sonic phenomena operate as spatial, material, and political forces in geographies of conflict, particularly in Lebanon. Tracing how auditory perception produces and calibrates relationships between bodies, environments, and systems of power, she investigates indices of war as registered beyond the limits of the ocular. She has taken on roles as a filmmaker, archivist, research associate, and architectural designer. Her work has been exhibited at the MIT Museum, the MIT List Visual Arts Center, and the Beirut Art Center. Her essays appear in Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, Imprint 04, and La Papeleria. Anouti holds a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut.

Mohamad Nahleh
Collaborator, Assistant Professor of Architecture
Mohamad Nahleh is an assistant professor of architecture at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School and founder of Nightrise. His work confronts imperial and capitalist regimes of illumination by reclaiming night as a primary site for architectural and political inquiry. Through writing and building as entwined practices, he studies how communities facing colonial violence and ecological devastation mobilize darkness to forge worlds beyond the grip of oppression and pollution. His scholarship appears in Places, The Avery Review, The Funambulist, and Volume, and his forthcoming book with Columbia Books on Architecture and the City is supported by the Graham Foundation as well as fellowships from the Journal of Architectural Education and MacDowell. Nahleh holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the American University of Beirut and a Master of Science in Architecture Studies from MIT, where he also taught for several years.

Jess Myers (Syracuse)
Collaborator, Assistant Professor of Architecture
Jess Myers is an urbanist and assistant professor of architecture at Syracuse University whose research stands at the intersection of urbanism, sound studies, and geography to develop the concept of audiosocial space. Her podcast Here There Be Dragons takes an in-depth look at the impact of security narratives on urban planning through the eyes of city residents in New York, Paris, Stockholm, and Odessa. Myers’ interdisciplinary practice includes work as an editor, writer, podcaster, and curator. In the past, Myers has worked in diverse roles—archivist, analyst, teacher—within cultural practices that include Bernard Tschumi Architects, the Service Employees International Union, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Rhode Island School of Design. Her work can be found in the Journal of Architectural Education, Urban Omnibus, The Architect’s Newspaper, Log, l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, Avery Review, The Architectural Review, Places, Volume, Dwell, and the Funambulist Magazine.

EcoRove (Jumanah Abbas and Iyad Abou Gaida)
Collaborators
Iyad Abou Gaida is a Lebanese farmer, ecological designer, architect, and researcher, and co-founder of EcoRove, a collaborative research and storytelling platform. Iyad’s research engages ecologies of human and non-human beings through film, illustration, and spatial practice, addressing aesthetic and socio-political urgencies for architecture and urbanism across dimensions and geographies. Through EcoRove, Iyad’s work has been presented at the New Museum, New Inc Demo 2025, and the Tallinn Architecture Biennial (TAB). He was part of New Inc’s Creative Science Track (Year 11), and the work has been supported by the Alserkal Arts Foundation and AFAC, with an honorary mention at Prix Ars Electronica. Iyad gained farming experience living on his ancestral terraced agricultural fields with his family in Hasbaya, South Lebanon. He is the co-founder of Taïm Olive, a producer of extra virgin olive oil that honors traditional farming practices and the resilience of the land.

Jumanah Abbas is an architect, curator, and researcher working at the intersection of spatial practice, critical geography, and contemporary art. Prior to joining Dubai Collection, she was an Assistant Curator for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project. From 2021 to 2024, she worked as a Curatorial Assistant in the Chairperson’s Office at Qatar Museums, contributing to exhibitions including Yayoi Kusama: My Soul Blooms Forever (2022, Museum of Islamic Art), One Tiger or Another (2021, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art), and Zwara: Rights to Design (2024, M7), alongside institutional research initiatives for Rubaiyat Qatar and the upcoming Quadrennial opening in 2026. Abbas has participated in several international residencies and fellowships, including the Architecture and Critical Accessibility Fellowship at the Critical Design Lab at Vanderbilt University (2024-2025), a Curatorial and Research Residency at the Singapore Art Museum (2023), and a Curator-in-Residence position at the Doha Fire Station for the MENASA-Qatar 2022 Year of Culture. Her work has been presented at the New Museum, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, and the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

Michael Wade
Research and Production Assistant, Graduate Research Associate

Special thanks to Curtis Roth, Sandhya Kochar, Michael Baumberger, Jean-Yves Munch, Marc Ainger, Christina Battikha, Brian King, Luke Buzard, Faith Folarin, Quinn Schreiber, and Mason Cessna.

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The Banvard Gallery is located on the first floor of Knowlton Hall and is open Monday–Friday from 10 a.m.–4 p.m.