Based in Beirut, Zein Daouk is a multidisciplinary architect with a passion for ceramics and an obsession for creating. Her journey into clay begins in 1999, but it is only in 2020 that it becomes her voice and she devotes herself to ceramics professionally. Her work embraces the dialogue that links disciplines and highlights the fluid narrative between functional art and sculptural design. She explores form by working with the four elements; water stretches shapes into earth, air commits them to form and fire becomes the founding act that brings them to life.

A harmonious combination of biomorphic forms emerges and pushes the sculptural vocabulary to uncover a mysterious new species of functional art objects.

At the essence of her craft lies an insatiable curiosity to learn.

• Born: 1969
• Hometown: Beirut, Lebanon

“It takes a mind quiet enough to appreciate silent beauty, courage not to fear spontaneity, willingness to accept things as they are: graceful in their delicate asymmetry. It hinges upon the ability to slow down, to shift the balance from doing to being, to grasp the subtly graceful, the quietly sculptural…

In the walls of clay forms, secrets unfold: nothing is finished and nothing is perfect; all is revealed as the clay peacefully flows and the muted words softly take form.”

Daouk brings to life a new species of art objects; silent yet sentient pieces that flirt between sculpture and function. These objects both playful and organic speak with vibrant hues that emerge from an intricate layering and firing of multiple colors, but when encountered in person, it is their surprising fragility that stands out. They reside in contemporary ceramics while rooting themselves in expressionism with its emotive colour palette. Formed from a combination of techniques such as hand building, slab work, coiling, and wheel throwing, each piece turns out, like the fungi they are based on, to be as light as air. They draw from the potent healing powers of nature and emanate their energy to nurture the symbiotic relationship between habitat and inhabitant. At the essence of her craft lies an insatiable curiosity to learn.

Zein Daouk’s Design Manifesto

“It takes a mind quiet enough to appreciate silent beauty, courage not to fear spontaneity, willingness to accept things as they are: graceful in their delicate asymmetry. It hinges upon the ability to slow down, to shift the balance from doing to being, to grasp the subtly graceful, the quietly sculptural…

In the walls of clay forms, secrets unfold: nothing is finished & nothing is perfect; all is revealed as the clay peacefully flows & the muted words softly take form.”