Vancouver artist Marie Khouri imbues her modernist sculptures with emotion
The Cairo-born sculptor, whose family fled the Lebanese Civil War, is hosting intimate studio tours as part of IDS Vancouver 2020
Marie Khouri’s 2014 piece Let’s Sit and Talk spells out its title in flowing Arabic script while doubling as a seating arrangement. Photos courtesy Marie Khouri
The Interior Design Show (IDS) Vancouver takes place October 1 to 8 at various venues and online. Please check IDS Vancouver for its COVID-19 policies and protocols.
Outside the Canada Line’s Olympic Village Station is a snow-white form that resembles a chunk of an iceberg smoothed and shaped by wind and water that could be adrift in Arctic Ocean. It’s a striking artwork to be sure, but it also invites you to sit down and rest for a while. It’s called Le Banc, and it’s an example of Vancouver artist Marie Khouri’s modernist sculpture: a piece that morphs art and design just as it imbues objects with a sense of yearning.
That 11-foot-long cast-cement bench was Khouri’s first public art installation, from 2011. Since then, she has exhibited sculptures across Canada and the U.S. and in France, England, Japan, Mexico, and beyond. She has mounted public works throughout Metro Vancouver and as far away as Hong Kong, Djibouti, and, soon, Paris.
At this year’s Interior Design Show (IDS) Vancouver, Khouri will host intimate studio and garden tours at her private space, with her work on display for viewing. She’ll open up her material and maquette exploration area and share thoughts on her creative process. It’s a process that draws on everything from 20th century sculptor Henry Moore, who’s known for his abstract and organically shaped bronze and stone figures, to a childhood upended by political unrest.
Born in Cairo, Khouri moved to Lebanon at age two, after Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized industries and businesses in Egypt. Her family lived in Beirut’s Quartier des Ambassades until 1976, when she was 15. The year prior, the Lebanese Civil War had begun. They fled to Madrid.
Eyes on the Street is a public art installation in Vancouver from 2018.
“No one comes out unharmed from a civil war, be it physically or emotionally,” Khouri tells Stir. “The wounds remain. I managed to heal them through my work, my sculptures. It has been my therapy.
“Having been unrooted at a young age I created my nest where ever life took me,” she says. “This sense of search is very present in my work. My Shadow series speaks of wanderers seeking refuge, and my Spheres and Vessels are nests, wombs.”
Khouri’s family moved to Vancouver, then she left for Paris, making it her home for the next 30 years. She studied at L’Ecole du Louvre, which gave her a solid foundation of classical training. Sculpture, however, wasn’t her first choice.
“I was very bad at drawing, frustrated from not being able to translate onto paper what I saw in my mind,” Khouri explains. “A teacher from my drawing class literally took me by the hand one day into one of the sculpture workshops, where things just connected. I needed that hand-to-material contact, I needed to dig into it. I saw in 3D and therefore had to create in 3D.
“We had to do hours and hours of hands, ears, and bodies,” she says. “It instilled in me a sense of scale that now informs all of my abstract work.”
She is also inspired by Moore’s idea of direct carving. “Sculpture is all about adding life to the materials, and direct carving allows that, be it in stone or clay,” Khouri says.
Marie Khouri’s Spheres series speaks to the idea of home.
Khouri moved back to Vancouver in 2005 with her own family. She considers it her home, the place that has allowed her to grow as an artist and pursue public art. She says she feels blessed to live by the ocean and mountains and be surrounded by so many green spaces. “We have a sense of freedom of wilderness, of grandeur,” Khouri says. “Everything is possible.”
The program for IDS Vancouver 2020 looks different than that of past iterations because of the global pandemic, with more than 40 virtual and live micro events. The theme of Natural Wonder has designers exploring the interplay between nature and design, while adhering to physical distancing protocols. Most of the installations will have a “walk-through” format, with guests moving through spaces in groups of no more than six people.
Among the highlights is Toronto designer Omar Gandhi’s “Where the Wild Things Are” window installation at Inform Interiors, inspired by Maurice Sendak’s iconic book of the same name; and a garden and forest installation called Wonderment designed by Studio Block x LM Studio and sponsored by Green Theory Design.
Marie Khouri will talk about her creative process in a micro event at IDS Vancouver 2020.
Khouri says she’s thankful that the show will go on, albeit in new ways amid COVID-19. (The Creative Process With Marie Khouri studio tours on October 8 are free, but preregistration is required.)
“We are living very particular times presently, and we have been for the past eight months,” Khouri says. “Everything I sculpt comes from the palm of my hands. I create maquettes and small-scale models that become these very large bodies of work reaching up to 30 feet. Everything is experienced now in a different way, so I wanted to give the opportunity for people to still be able to view and feel art in an intimate setting, speak of process, materials, public art, and my private practice.
“We still need human connections and relations; we still need to feel, touch and see,” she says. “If IDS is adding a little of this to Vancouver through these intimate, safe and protected environments while taking all of the precautions, I say bravo.” ”
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