Chaouki Choukini at work in France, where he lives. Courtesy Green Art Gallery
Chaouki Choukini at work in France, where he lives. Courtesy Green Art Gallery
Chaouki Choukini at work in France, where he lives. Courtesy Green Art Gallery
Chaouki Choukini at work in France, where he lives. Courtesy Green Art Gallery

Carving a niche: how Chaouki Choukini creates abstract sculptures


Melissa Gronlund
  • English
  • Arabic

Green Art Gallery in Dubai has always had a historical bent – part of its broader interest in the Gulf over the past 10 years in researching and exhibiting Arab modernism. The gallery has recently shown the work of early and mid 20th-century Egyptian painters such as Samir Rafi, Inji Efflatoun and Effat Naghi, and currently it is turning its gaze to the finely carved, abstract sculptures made by Lebanese artist Chaouki Choukini. Shaped out of wood, marble and bronze, the works bear a proud verticality, rooted in the landscape but somehow musical and rhythmic. Choukini speaks of the "cord", or a single line that passes through his sculptures, holding shapes together and forming new growths. This exhibition provides the chance to see the progression of these ideas over 40 years of work, bringing together sculptures from 1979 to the present.  

Choukini was born in Choukine, Lebanon, in 1946 and, like many Arab artists of the era, moved to Paris. "I had just begun at university and was taking classes to prepare to study medicine in Egypt," he recalls. "At the same time – almost like a hobby – I was making sculptures in clay and ­terracotta." On the basis of those, he won a scholarship from the Lebanese government to study in Europe.

‘Improvisation’ (2019) is carved from an African wood considered closest to genuine mahogany. Photo Anna Shtraus
‘Improvisation’ (2019) is carved from an African wood considered closest to genuine mahogany. Photo Anna Shtraus

"I came from a modest family and the studies were free," he says, explaining that his parents did not object. And off he went to Paris. It was 1967 – the year before radical unrest in the city – but Choukini was installed in an older school, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where academics still reigned. It was there that he found the materials he would work with his whole life – wood, clay and stone. 

I was taken by the idea of sculpting from live models, but quickly I was converted into working with my forms from my imagination. 

"It was academics, but I was interested in it because in Lebanon, we had not had the chance to see classical sculptures or modernist ones by Rodin or Maillol," he said. "I was taken by the idea of sculpting from live models, but quickly I was converted into working with my forms from my imagination. Always with elemental materials – like plaster – and then little by little I started to work on stone, and there I started to really have abstract tendencies in my work."

He also met his wife, a Japanese artist named Ayako, at the Ecole, which proved significant both for his life and his artwork. She had an uncle, Fumio Otani, who was also a sculptor, making monumental works in wood and marble. Choukini became his informal apprentice and from him learnt Japanese techniques of working with the material, using specialised tools such as Japanese scissors, small adzes and saws that were different from the kind he'd come across in Lebanon or in Paris.

He also learnt what he terms a more spiritual technique – an esprit of working with the material. "It was a question of what does it mean to touch the material, and to make something with it," he explains. "Above all, a spiritual question. I learnt those techniques from Monsieur Otani, but I also created my own vision of art and sculpture. I wanted to conserve something for myself."

Chaouki Choukini’s bronze sculpture calls to mind an unsteady stack of books by a bedside. Anna Shtraus
Chaouki Choukini’s bronze sculpture calls to mind an unsteady stack of books by a bedside. Anna Shtraus

Choukini's work has remained relatively constant: the same belief in modernist forms wends its way through his early pieces as it does through his later. Sculptures made this year call to mind his early contemporaries, such as Saloua Raouda Choucair and Mona Saudi, Lebanese artists who also studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Like them, Choukini's insistence on the abstract throughout four decades feels like an act of holding his nerve, expressing emotions through acts alone, rather than resorting to words. A 2009 sculpture, a thick rectangular block of blond wood, is scored with three deep cuts; in the centre, Choukini has carved a small aperture, where a slim morsel of wood stands precariously. The title is Gaza Wounds, made in response to the Gaza-Israel conflict of 2008-2009. 

Choukini remained outside Lebanon during the civil war of 1975-1990, settling mostly in Jordan and France, but the conflict left a strong impression on him, imbuing his work with a sombre feel. "I was very affected," he says. "It was like my work could no longer aspire for joy, but had to find another aesthetic, another beauty, another way of signalling beauty. It became, instead, sober, tragic."

This sobriety is never quite allowed to go unchecked: flourishes of intimacy or hope pockmark the sculptures. An untitled work made in blackened bronze from this year calls to mind books by a bedside, in the kind of unsteady stack born of a lack of time and a surfeit of ambition. A square window is set – improbably straight – into the centre of the sculpture, while a rounded stone seems to weigh the whole work down: the effect is both of permanence and contingency. Improvisation, made in wood this year, is topped by a mosaic-like arch of chiselled-out blocks of different sizes, evoking a musical riff that bends backwards on itself and digresses in fits and starts.  

“You can see in this exhibition a sort of progression or pathway through time,” he says, sketching out an arc from the more monumental to the more minutely carved. “Now I’m 73 years old, and I work by myself. I have to be able to turn and carve the blocks of wood on my own. I now make sculptures that are not that big, not that heavy, but despite that, there is in each a monumentality – the capacity to take on another dimension and an openness towards expansion.

"I saw in this show all my work, and I felt like I was attached to all the pieces, without having to say this one is good, this one is the best," he says, with a laugh. "I felt like they were all my babies."

Chaouki Choukini is at Green Art Gallery in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, until January 11

The specs

Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo

Power: 261hp at 5,500rpm

Torque: 405Nm at 1,750-3,500rpm

Transmission: 9-speed auto

Fuel consumption: 6.9L/100km

On sale: Now

Price: From Dh117,059

Global state-owned investor ranking by size

1.

United States

2.

China

3.

UAE

4.

Japan

5

Norway

6.

Canada

7.

Singapore

8.

Australia

9.

Saudi Arabia

10.

South Korea

The specs
  • Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
  • Power: 640hp
  • Torque: 760nm
  • On sale: 2026
  • Price: Not announced yet
MATCH INFO

Manchester City 3
Danilo (16'), Bernardo Silva (34'), Fernandinho (72')

Brighton & Hove Albion 1
Ulloa (20')

The Sky Is Pink

Director: Shonali Bose

Cast: Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Farhan Akhtar, Zaira Wasim, Rohit Saraf

Three stars

The specs
Engine: 77.4kW all-wheel-drive dual motor
Power: 320bhp
Torque: 605Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh219,000
On sale: Now
CONFIRMED%20LINE-UP
%3Cp%3EElena%20Rybakina%20(Kazakhstan)%0D%3Cbr%3EOns%20Jabeur%20(Tunisia)%0D%3Cbr%3EMaria%20Sakkari%20(Greece)%0D%3Cbr%3EBarbora%20Krej%C4%8D%C3%ADkov%C3%A1%20(Czech%20Republic)%0D%3Cbr%3EBeatriz%20Haddad%20Maia%20(Brazil)%0D%3Cbr%3EJe%C4%BCena%20Ostapenko%20(Latvia)%0D%3Cbr%3ELiudmila%20Samsonova%0D%3Cbr%3EDaria%20Kasatkina%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3EVeronika%20Kudermetova%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3ECaroline%20Garcia%20(France)%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3EMagda%20Linette%20(Poland)%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3ESorana%20C%C3%AErstea%20(Romania)%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3EAnastasia%20Potapova%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3EAnhelina%20Kalinina%20(Ukraine)%E2%80%AF%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3EJasmine%20Paolini%20(Italy)%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3EEmma%20Navarro%20(USA)%E2%80%AF%0D%3Cbr%3ELesia%20Tsurenko%20(Ukraine)%0D%3Cbr%3ENaomi%20Osaka%20(Japan)%20-%20wildcard%0D%3Cbr%3EEmma%20Raducanu%20(Great%20Britain)%20-%20wildcard%3Cbr%3EAlexandra%20Eala%20(Philippines)%20-%20wildcard%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
The specs

Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo

Power: 247hp at 6,500rpm

Torque: 370Nm from 1,500-3,500rpm

Transmission: 10-speed auto

Fuel consumption: 7.8L/100km

Price: from Dh94,900

On sale: now

Day 4, Dubai Test: At a glance

Moment of the day Lahiru Gamage appeared to have been hard done by when he had his dismissal of Sami Aslam chalked off for a no-ball. Replays suggested he had not overstepped. No matter. Two balls later, the exact same combination – Gamage the bowler and Kusal Mendis at second slip – combined again to send Aslam back.

Stat of the day Haris Sohail took three wickets for one run in the only over he bowled, to end the Sri Lanka second innings in a hurry. That was as many as he had managed in total in his 10-year, 58-match first-class career to date. It was also the first time a bowler had taken three wickets having bowled just one over in an innings in Tests.

The verdict Just 119 more and with five wickets remaining seems like a perfectly attainable target for Pakistan. Factor in the fact the pitch is worn, is turning prodigiously, and that Sri Lanka’s seam bowlers have also been finding the strip to their liking, it is apparent the task is still a tough one. Still, though, thanks to Asad Shafiq and Sarfraz Ahmed, it is possible.

Day 1, Abu Dhabi Test: At a glance

Moment of the day Dimuth Karunaratne had batted with plenty of pluck, and no little skill, in getting to within seven runs of a first-day century. Then, while he ran what he thought was a comfortable single to mid-on, his batting partner Dinesh Chandimal opted to stay at home. The opener was run out by the length of the pitch.

Stat of the day – 1 One six was hit on Day 1. The boundary was only breached 18 times in total over the course of the 90 overs. When it did arrive, the lone six was a thing of beauty, as Niroshan Dickwella effortlessly clipped Mohammed Amir over the square-leg boundary.

The verdict Three wickets down at lunch, on a featherbed wicket having won the toss, and Sri Lanka’s fragile confidence must have been waning. Then Karunaratne and Chandimal's alliance of precisely 100 gave them a foothold in the match. Dickwella’s free-spirited strokeplay meant the Sri Lankans were handily placed at 227-4 at the close.