Lily Abichahine

Lily Abichahine (Lebanon, 1985) is a lawyer, researcher, and artist. She holds degrees in law (USJ, 2007; Paris Descartes, 2008) and performing arts (Paris VIII, 2016-2020). She explores the relationship between art and law through lecture-performances, installations, and videos. A PhD candidate at Paris VIII, her thesis focuses on fiction in legal and artistic representations. Her works include Exquisite Corpse (lecture-performance, Frankfurt, 2021), L’Étreinte (happening, Paris, 2021), Abjad Hawwaz (installation, Beirut, 2022), Mare Nostrum (performances and experimental videos, Palermo, Bremen, 2021–ongoing), and Tribunal for an Island (performance, Dublin, 2025).

At Villa Medici, Corps Pæän explores divination and police interrogations. Lily stages the body through ancient divinatory practices documented in Umbria and Tuscany, while examining body movement during an interrogation. Merging law and art, she is interested in palmomancy, a form of divination based on the analysis of involuntary body vibrations, inherited from Greco-Roman mantic practices. Revisiting the interrogation from an artistic perspective, she interrogates the Etruscan heritage and judicial investigative methods still in use today.