Nada Sehnaoui was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1958. She studied at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne, in Paris, where she read history. She attended Boston University for her graduate studies in film production after obtaining a graduate degree in Sociology at the University of Paris X-Nanterre in Paris and a diploma in Cinematography at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III. Her installations question the use of public spaces in relation to collective memory and democracy building. She is a visual artist whose work, paintings and installations deal with war, personal memory, collective amnesia, identity and the recording of history.