Movement of the Angle

Lebanese sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair did not train in art, but in natural sciences, and attended classes on philosophy and history. Her educational background had an impact on her paintings and sculptures. Choucair drew inspiration from Islamic concepts, for example, poetry, as in the artwork Poem. She studied the traditional structure of Islamic poetry to find a way to give form to a spiritual dimension. This stone sculpture is part of a specific production by the artist in the mid-1960s. Originally called ‘joined units’, they were later retitled ‘qasa’id’ (poems). Here, Poem is a sort of a column, where every piece (module) is assembled. Choucair created a harmonious sculpture by shaping the same pieces. This refers to the Sufi notion of repetition, the impact of which can be found in the repetitive rhythm of the words in Islamic poetry. Poem is a seminal example of the artistic approach of Saloua Raouda Choucair, who chose abstraction as the ultimate method to adapt Islamic artistic heritage, as well as point of view, into a contemporary art language.