Vancouver-based sculptor, Marie Khouri, represents the broad multi cultural and diverse demographic of Western Canada.
Born in Egypt and raised in Lebanon, Khouri has developed a vast range of cultural and historical influences within her practice.
With a childhood interrupted by the assassination of her father during the Lebanese Civil War, Khouri was relocated to Spain, Italy and Vancouver, finally settling in Paris where she was classically trained in sculpture at l’École du Louvre.
On her return to Vancouver, a retrospective of her life took form in her sculpture, reflecting a passion for innovation and spontaneity.
Khouri’s work resides at the often-tenuous place between art and design, suggesting a lack of countries reminiscent of modernist thinking best epitomized by the Bauhaus School. Despite their formalist impulses, the sculptures she creates are not without feeling.
Greatly influenced by Henry Moore’s idea of direct carving, Marie Khouri’s sculptures blend and extend metaphors of language, form and the body to propose an inextricable link – both political and personal – to a life deeply affected by the complex histories of the Middle East; and it is from these histories that her most evocative works emerge, rooted in a profound sense of dislocation and the search for a greater sense of place.
Each sculpture is formed through an extensive hands-on process that employs traditional sculpting techniques alongside contemporary innovations in material and building standards.
Her timeless and unconstrained forms remain firmly situated in the contemporary moment, pushing the barriers of the medium where the surfaces reveal the entire process and the finished sculpture reveals the evolutionary method by which it was created.
Marie Khouri earned renown for her public sculptures, such as the Olympic Station sculpture Le Banc, shown at Vancouver Olympic Station as part of the 2011 Vancouver Biennale and permanently acquired by a collector.
Khouri has received numerous awards in recognition of her achievements.