Rita Hassouani

Born in Beirut 1983, due to the circumstances of the past years in Lebanon she moved to Damascus, graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Sculpture Department in 2005.

The teachers at the Faculty, where she began to form her artistic personality, had a great role in building the concept of sculpture and its dimensions for Rita.

After several years, and because of the current situation in Syria, Rita had to return to Lebanon for the same circumstances that had taken her to Syria. These circumstances had a major part in crystallizing the technical perspective for Rita. Beirut was the beginning, where she met the artist, Gulene Torosian, who had a major influence on her academic and artistic concept.

Rita sees art everywhere, in the streets, in the museums and in the movements of people, which has increased her attachment to the formation. “The woman in my sculptures is a world in itself, where I see in it everything”.

The world is manifested in Rita’s work as a major adventure. From these concepts, Rita creates the subject of her sculpture. Each work has a story behind it, a conflict between emotions and body movement, a search for the void in the bloc and remodeling it as a sculpture. In addition, here sculptures show a lot of femininity, whether by her obsession with circles or in the female form. “To me, the circle means life and death at the same time.” Through circles, the artist can draw many things. “I tried to do several experiments by sculpting objects as a body or as a whole circle”.

Rita finds wood warm, lively, beautiful and rich in texture and colors, and has a direct relation to mother earth, while she sees bronze as a noble, strong and durable metal. Rita has the tendency of using these materials separately or combined based first on the idea and second on the shape. She also adds that the size of the sculpture varies according to the subject itself and the material used to form the sculpture.

In 2017 Rita participated in Beirut Art Fair through Hamazkayin Gallery, where she exhibited five pieces of her work, and then participated in a collective exhibition with a group of artists in the same year at Gallery Hamazkayin.