Cracks in the Edifice investigates the unfinished Rashid Karami International Fairground in Tripoli, Lebanon, designed in 1962 by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer and conceived with utopian ambition. Now a modern ruin, the site reflects the collapse of a postcolonial national project and the fragility of the Lebanese state. Through exhibitions, public programs, and a publication across São Paulo, Beirut, and Los Angeles, the project links the fairground’s suspended future and enduring utopian promise to histories of Brazilian, Lebanese, and Californian modernism through contemporary artworks and research. In doing so, it considers how architecture can function simultaneously as infrastructure, symbol, and site of critique. Bringing together contemporary artworks, research, and public dialogue, the project expands discourse around modernism, nationhood, and collective futures.

Suzy Halajian is a curator, writer, and researcher based in Los Angeles, where she serves as executive director and chief curator at JOAN. Her practice centers on long-term collaborations with artists and engages critically with the intersections of art, politics, and social histories. She explores strategies of image-making through the lens of colonial legacies and contemporary surveillance states. Halajian has curated exhibitions and programs at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), ONE Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries, the Hammer Museum, and Human Resources, all in Los Angeles. Curatorial and programming work has also been shown at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Oregon Contemporary, Portland; Kunstverein, Amsterdam; UKS, Oslo; Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna; and the Sursock Museum, Beirut. Her work has been supported by the Graham Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, and a Curatorial Research Fellowship from the Warhol Foundation. She holds a master’s of arts from Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies and is a PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz.

Noah Simblist is a curator, writer, and educator. He works on the ways in which contemporary artists address history, sovereignty, and the tensions between political forces and self-determination. He edited Living to Learn: Art + Education for the Common Good, copublished by Inventory Press and the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), supported by Teiger Foundation. He is also editor of Tania Bruguera: The Francis Effect (Deep Vellum, 2022) and Artist in Residence (Publication Studio, 2021). Curatorial projects include Commonwealth at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (2020); Conjunctions and Disjunctions at Black Ground in Cali, Colombia (2022); Aissa Deebi: Exile is Hard Work at Birzeit University Museum in Palestine (2017); False Flags at Pelican Bomb in New Orleans (2016); and Emergency Measures at the Power Station, Dallas (2015). He is associate professor of art at Virginia Commonwealth University.