Studio Visit: Khaled Dawwa with Lunch

Khaled Dawwa is a Syrian artist and sculptor based in France since late 2014. He was born in 1985 in the city of Masyaf, west of Syria, and com­pleted his uni­ver­sity studies in Damascus where he grad­u­ated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Sculpture Department in 2007. Since his early child­hood, Khaled has been inter­ested in the con­cepts of mass and dimen­sions, and has begun to exper­i­ment with the use of avail­able tools. This encour­aged him to com­plete his sec­ondary edu­ca­tion in the pro­fes­sional field, where he gained con­sid­er­able tech­nical exper­tise and sup­ported his studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts.

The core char­ac­ters to Khaled’s work began to crys­tal­lize with his grad­u­a­tion pro­ject from the Faculty of Fine Arts, which was titled “In Waiting” for the polit­ical and social sub­ject to dom­i­nate later. During his grad­u­a­tion pro­ject, which coin­cided with major polit­ical and social trans­for­ma­tions in Arab soci­eties, including Syria, Khaled’s obses­sion with the role and impact of art in people’s lives dom­i­nated his approach. Later, Khaled joined the “Al Bustan” cul­tural group in Damascus in early 2011, where he helped estab­lish and equip the centre. He con­tinued to work there until 2013. He then trav­elled to Lebanon where he spent a year hiding, working secretly and con­tin­uing his art through the cre­ation of the clay and knife Facebook page. Khaled cur­rently lives in Paris and con­tinues to work at his studio there.