www.taniakhouri.com
Artist BioTania Khouri (Oklahoma City, Ok. 1990) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist investigating cultural hybridity through oral histories and familial lineages.
Self-Care, Divination Survival Kit, 2020
Handmade olive oil soap, Najjar coffee, rakwi, coffee cup, notebook, muslin, paper envelope, fabric. This survival kit fits into a medium flat rate shipping box from the US postal service.
Coffee Divination Reading Performance, 2021 45:00 minutes
Read me a Life, 2020 Video still
Knowledge Exchange, 2021 Photographic Documentation, Coffee Pattern, Returned Object from Self-Care Divination Survival Kit
Pseudo Village and life readings, 2019 Wallpaper, Tassels, Ceramic, Video, 57 x 48”
Soap Recipe of Old, 2020
Handmade olive oil soap, ceramic, audio
18" × 6" × 6"
Marking Time: Tracings of the Self, 2018 Olive Oil Soap, Textiles, Wood, 55” x 80” x 100”
Clay Bodies, 2019-20 Ceramic clay, various sizes
Attempts of construction, 2020
Runner, video
28" × 6" × 24"
Attempts of construction, (detail)
Artist StatementTania Khouri works with sculpture, video, and installation to embody and assemble evidence of her fragmented origin story. Drawing on Lebanese rituals, such as life readings with coffee grinds in a cup, soap making, and baking bread, she investigates the loss of information in the act of translation and passing down of knowledge within a diaspora. As she works to recreate and relearn the authentic objects and rituals, the resulting “failures” become the work and speak to attempts to recreate home within displacement. In the coffee reading ritual, the cup represents a portal between different histories and locations. Soap making signifies an alchemical and material process that she connects to her experience of merging familial knowledge and new environments. Baking bread speaks to the lineage of craft and the embodied knowledge that is transferred generationally. She produces physical clay portals that the viewer is invited to look and listen into. These vessels contain fragmented glimpses of rituals taking place and recipes being passed down. Through research and practice, she becomes the gatekeeper to a landscape where she can navigate her cultural hybridity.