I was born in 1969, in a field of sculptures.

Shapes were jutting from the ground like ever-growing trees.

I can still see myself climbing those stone fortresses, those modern towers carved by my father’s hands; hiding behind those figures, playing with cousins and friends. That was my playground… and I cherished it.

My childhood was mostly about drawing and games. My toys helped me create a wonderful, yet imaginary world. There were paper planes and boats, wooden construction games, and a magnetic board with geometrical shapes: squares, triangles, lozenges, punched discs, bars, arcs and balls, all in silver metal. As time passed by, my shapes were rusting bit by bit, but I liked them still… I was actually fascinated by them coming suddenly to life; rising up on their magnetic board; sticking to one another; giving birth to thousands of visual combinations.

Between the small shapes of my childhood games and the geometry of my sculptures; between those pieces stuck to one another by the force of magnetism and the welded pieces of my gigantic sculptures… half my life had gone by.

My childhood was a happy one. I was surrounded by a sculptor father, a poet mother and scores of cousins in Rachana, a mythical village spared by a devastating nationwide war.

My adolescence on the other hand was difficult, marked by a painful separation, a death… that of a great man, an idol, a father.

For a year, I studied architecture at Alba, before hastily flying to Paris, in 1989.  I spent the next three years studying art at “Ensaama”… I remember my frequent visits to exhibitions and museums, which allowed me to make valuable artistic discoveries at the time.

But then… Then I returned to Rachana… I went back to the stone; to the wood; to the bronze and the iron. I went back to meet a woman, one who became mine. I met the mother of my children, my two beloved angels.

It was the big come back… I had returned to happiness, to childhood, to the games I left behind and the metal I had put aside; but mostly, I returned to creation.

From an adult playing childish games to a child turning his games into a profession… I’ve always favored my magnetic board over regular modeling clay; and today, I prefer building my sculptures rather than carving them. By building them, I grant my viewers the liberty to imagine my art on the move, with articulations, internal forms to discover, and combinations of simple yet constantly changing shapes. One might actually discover several sculptures in the same work of art.