Chouki Choukini has spent over six decades reacting materially to how landscapes evolve and how societies shapeshift throughout history. He settled in Paris in the early 1990s and has continued his work with mostly vertical sculptures up to the present day. While he has worked with bronze, stone, and other materials, this selection of works illustrates his mastery of freeform wooden sculpture, his main craft. His fascination with wenge wood, native to Central Africa, goes hand-in-hand with his use of other African woods in his practice. Besides wenge, the selected pieces also boast carvings in iroko, sipo, and bubinga hardwoods, with occasional uses of oak. For Choukini, wood is a material that is deeply connected to the very earth he examines in his work. His chippings and scrapings normally follow the natural direction of wooden fibres. Be it horizons, abstract concepts, human figures, aerial views of land, bird flights, celestial figures, or tragedies, he treats these themes with inventive geometries and curves. Choukini’s three-dimensional works, dancing between rough and polished, presence and absence, may well be the “second life” of the watercolour sketches that generally impel his pieces.
This is the first time the work of Chaouki Choukini is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Daniel Rey
