Léa Bou Habib (b. 1993) was born and raised in Lebanon, and has lived between Spain (2014–2018) and the United Kingdom (2020–2023). She is currently based in Lebanon.

Lea’s artistic practice is an exploration of time and identity. Through a process she describes as active imagination, oil paint is built layer upon layer, allowing painted subjects to emerge, dissolve, and re-form. Working between surrealism and expressionism, Lea approaches painting as a visual performance—one that transforms the surface over time, under specific moments and conditions.

Her work explores themes of identity, love, vulnerability, and addiction, often unfolding through timelines that trace states of agony and enchantment. Rather than presenting a single fixed image, the paintings reflect an accumulation of emotions and thoughts. This process of constant change is shaped by Lea’s resistance to cultural, political, and social structures that have become part of her identity. Painting becomes a way of dissolving definition—to become no one again, to transcend what is already known. In a singular moment, any object or subject can be stripped of its identity, revealing its essence. Expressing the truth of that moment remains central to her practice.

Lea received her formal training at the Barcelona Academy of Art where she studied Traditional figurative painting, grounding her conceptual work in a strong technical foundation. She has lived and worked in Beirut, Barcelona & London, experiences that continue to inform her exploration of belonging, displacement, and identity.

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After returning from Barcelona in 2019, Lea became increasingly interested with her relationship to Lebanon, and the ways national, political, and social structures shape personal identity. Since 2019, she has engaged with public art as a platform for exploring these tensions, producing projects across various scales.

Her recent public works—presented in Beirut Waterfront & Hamra, and documented through video and photography—address political trauma, injustice, and collective memory. These works emphasize resistance not as spectacle, but as necessity. Without resistance, the individual stands alone in their struggle for expression.

Lea’s work has been exhibited at Hoxton Gallery & others and her public art projects include the largest mural painted by a female artist in Beirut – Hamra. She is currently based in Beirut, where she continues to develop a practice that moves between the studio and the public sphere, using art as a means of witnessing, transformation, and survival.