In Risk (2024), Annabel Daou reflects on the effort to find soothing during her childhood, which was violently interrupted by the Lebanese Civil War. Her piece incorporates ink and acrylic on hand cut microfiber paper, a fine, synthetic, and highly breathable material that is primarily made of polyester. Daou is drawn to the microfiber paper for its malleable, fabric-like qualities and ability to indicate fragility. The process of repeatedly marking and cutting into this material to produce interlocking outlines embodies the struggle to negotiate past traumas and achieve some sense of repair. The repetition of ruin and repair is a central motif in Daou’s work, and resembles the perpetual efforts of cities like Beirut to cope with the external and internal violence that have shaped them. Daou notes that she strives toward “Capturing a moment of many different people at the same time, oftentimes people who don’t know each other…and listening to the streets of the world” (Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, 2023). Her piece reconsiders the experience of trauma not as a singular event but as a dispersed experience permeating the daily rhythms of a larger social body.