Huguette Caland was an interdisciplinary artist whose life was often mythologised in the public imagination. One of her early works, Maameltein (1970), refers to a district in Jounieh, north of Beirut, where her father—Lebanon’s first post-independence President—lived towards the end of his life. The painting deploys gemlike hues and resilient colour forms surrounded by black lines, which together develop an abstract composition recalling the curved bays of the neighbourhood. The binary lines herein also exist as a metaphor for Caland’s life—of whether to remain in Lebanon or, as she decided, depart for Paris, where her career burgeoned.