‘Silence has become both more dangerous and more complicit’: An interview with Lebanese-British artist, Amale Khlat

Amale Khlat, a Lebanese-British artist raised amid the Lebanese civil war, builds installations that avoid direct images of suffering in favor of concealment, absence, and material presence. Her 2025 piece 'The Archive of Silence,' staged as a war museum exhibition sponsored by an arms manufacturer, uses empty chairs, a one-way mirror, and an archival box of undisplayed objects to implicate viewers as witnesses rather than passive observers.

In this interview, Khlat explains that silence in her work is not emptiness but the result of institutional decisions about what gets collected, displayed, or funded, arguing that direct images of suffering produce a fleeting emotional response that quickly releases the viewer rather than holding them accountable. She trained at Penninghen in Paris and the Royal College of Art in London, and her practice spans installation, sculpture, print, video, and sound.

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