Artist Marie Khouri receives 2023 Award of Distinction as BC Achievement Foundation announces Applied Art + Design Awards
Sculptor joins recipients Kate Metten, Riley McFerrin, and Bridget Catchpole
VANCOUVER’S MARIE KHOURI, has won a top provincial prize for lifetime achievement for her work in sculpture and public art.
The BC Achievement Foundation made the announcement amid its Applied Art + Design Awards today. The award program, now in its 19th year, celebrates British Columbians who excel at creating functional art and design—including furniture, textiles, jewellery, ceramics, weaving, glass, fashion, industrial design, and more.
Born in Egypt and raised in Lebanon before studying in Europe and settling in Canada, Khouri pursued her formal sculpture education at the prestigious L’Ecole du Louvre in Paris. She has created more than 25 public sculptures in Canada and abroad, including France, England, Japan, and Mexico. Her works here have included Le Banc, outside the Canada Line’s Olympic Village Station—an 11-foot-long, snow-white, cast-cement bench with fluid curvatures and free-form arcs. Her I Love installation is on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery until November 19 in the first-floor Rotunda—three hand-carved curvilinear forms that pay homage to the calligraphic nature of Arabic; she draws inspiration from Henry Moore’s sensuous sculptures and Zaha Hadid’s organic architectural structures.
Marie Khouri’s Let’s sit and talk, 2014, in I Love at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Courtesy of the artist, photo by Ian Lefebvre, VAG
Other winners of the awards were Kate Metten, the Vancouver pottery artist who won the Judson Beaumont Emerging Artist prize, as well as Hornby Island multidisciplinary artist and art-jewellery designer Bridget Catchpole, and Hinterland Design visionary Riley McFerrin, whose studio brings together artists, woodworkers, and craftspeople who build by hand using natural materials.
BC Achievement will present a combined exhibition showcasing the recipients for both the 2023 Polygon Award in First Nations Art (announced last week) and Applied Art + Design Award, at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre from November 16 to 22.
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