BEIRUT, Lebanon — When Iman Hasbani first arrived in Beirut last November to do a month-long artist residency, she didn’t know if she had any art left in her. 

Ms. Hasbani, a Damascus-based installation and performance artist, had not done any personal work for the past two years, instead focusing on using art therapy to help children who had been affected by the war in Syria.

“In the beginning I just wanted to relax and lay in the grass,” she said, sitting in the large open-plan living room of Artist Residence Aley in the hills above Beirut. “It was very important for me to reconnect with myself, and slowly I was able to get an idea for a performance piece about my relationship to the earth.”