The Affirmative Happiness of a Green Dot
Alight with movement, the paintings of Hala Schoukair are delicate and yet full of presence, if not heavy with weight. This most recent body of work sees a shift in scale and intention, examining the moment of repetition, her connection with nature, and the gradual and organic build-up of marks. Her drawings, yet comprised of marks reminiscent of her paintings, demand an intimate connection. Held up to the light, rows of tiny punched-out dots and sewn lines, occasional and surprising objects drawn directly from the natural world, complex differences and similarities, tell the story of her personal journey with the unique directness of close work on paper.
Intensely detailed and repetitive, each mark, and each larger structure created from those marks, retains an individuality, a trace of the artists hand, her moment with that mark. This long, attentive moment, outside of language, full of emotion, is the vital force of Shoukair.
Recently, Hala’s work was part of the ARABOFUTURS exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (October 2024 - January 2025). She has also participated in the Abu Dhabi Art Fair in November 2024 and 2023, and had a solo exhibition, represented by Gallery Bessiere, at Art Paris 2022. Her previous solo shows included You Promised Me Spring (2017), and Grains of Light (2014), both of which were held at Agial Art Gallery in Beirut.
Recent group exhibitions included Intimate Garden Scene by Ashkal Alwan at Sursock Museum, Beirut (2023 - 2024), as well as the museum's 32nd Salon D’Automne (2016). She has also participated in the Morgenröte, aurora borealis and Levantin: Into your solar plexus at the Knusthalle Bern in Switzerland (2015), as well as the Continuity and Change: Islamic Tradition in Contemporary Art at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in New York (2007).
Hala’s work became part of the permanent collection of LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) in 2024, and the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, IL, in 2023.
Hala moved from New York to Lebanon in 2019, and currently lives in the town of Ras El Metn, where she has established The Saloua Raouda Choucair Foundation, which commemorates her mother’s art and legacy.
For the painters and poets, Laura J. Braverman, Amy Todman and Afaf Zurayk, of Faith in the Forming painting and poetry share an equal weight, though not a weight that can be measured on a scale. Rather the balance is one of knowing what is already there, what is coming from within. A word can be placed beside every painting, but this is hardly the point. Rather, for some, the painting or poem might arrive alongside its neighbour, might suggest itself perplexedly. Indeed, the relationship of the poem to the painting may be unclear, perhaps must remain a little unknown, because the painting and the word, though related, reach toward singular spaces, both of which continue to unfold alongside one another.
