Canvas magazine ran a profile interview with the Egyptian sculptor Khaled Zaki, written by Dana Husseino for the title's One on One interview strand. The piece traces an unusual route into sculpture: Zaki completed an MBA in business studies, then a Master's degree in restoration at Cairo University's Faculty of Archaeology, before moving to Italy in 1988-89 to learn stone carving directly in artisan workshops rather than in a studio setting.
Much of the conversation centres on Zaki's Resurrection series, in which fragmented stone figures are used to examine collective memory and the aftermath of displacement, a subject he traces back to his own family's experience following the 1967 war in Suez. The interview also revisits his representation of Egypt at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and Zaki describes a broader shift in his practice, from representational forms drawn from classical Mediterranean sculpture toward an abstraction he roots in ancient Egyptian minimalism. He tells Husseino he is currently developing new pieces inspired by seashells, returning to concerns from earlier in his career with what he calls greater technical maturity.
Read alongside Khaled Zaki's solo exhibition Resurrection at Tabari Artspace, which presented the fragmented stone figures the Canvas interview discusses, the piece works as a useful account of the thinking behind that body of work: the move from Italian craft training to a sculptural language built around memory, trauma and slow material transformation.
