Arabic Letters As Sculptural Loungers

My Cool Stuff feature for this week are these 3D sculptures by Marie Khouri. I fell in love with these lounges, a design truly created for dialogue. The beautiful pieces are on a touring exhibition. Look at them, aren’t they exquisite? What a clever design!

Story by Adele Weder 

The sensual shapes in Marie Khouri’s installation, recently on view at Vancouver’s Equinox Gallery, spell out “Let’s Sit and Talk” in Arabic. 

Design speaks to us on the most visceral level, but few can render its language as literally as Vancouver-based artist Marie Khouri. Her latest installation, Let’s Sit and Talk, exhorts us, in word and form, to connect with one another. Each of the 15 pieces is a sculpture you can sit on.

Together, they spell out the exhibition’s title, sculpted in beautiful cursive Arabic script. The quintilingual Khouri, born in Egypt, raised in Lebanon and trained in Paris, has made a career of conflating art with function: through her design studio, she also makes and sells jewellery, wine racks, benches, chaises longues and planters – all of which double as discrete sculptures.

Read more here:

http://www.azuremagazine.com/article/arabic-letters-sculptural-loungers/

http://www.westender.com/arts/sculptor-marie-khouri-explores-art-of-dialogue-1.1080457