Chaouki Choukini, Installation view at Green Art Gallery, Dubai, 2019
“Paysage Nocturne (Nocturnal Landscape) is an important work for me because it symbolizes the beginning of my career as a sculptor in the late Seventies, and this artistic path of mine goes beyond the 1990s. Sculpture, for me, is a personal reaction to nature, society, music, obstacles, and the life that we lead.
When I was younger, I used to go to my grandfather’s house during school holidays in a village called Choukine in the south of Lebanon, where I would contemplate mountains, trees, valleys, wells — unlike the views of Beirut. This led me to develop my love of nature, which influences my work. My expression of a landscape is not an exact representation of nature — I’m turning it into something metaphysical, imaginary and with an element of mystique."