Q and A with Chucrallah Fattouh (432 words 2 min. read )
1. When the world around you turns dark, politically or emotionally, do you retreat into art as refuge, resistance, or rebirth?
After every dark moment, a new part of me gets reborn, as if we are shaped by the painful stories we endure. Creation becomes a way to mirror myself, not into who I was before, but into someone who carries the scars as a form of language. Art doesn’t just offer refuge or resistance, it becomes the place where I renegotiate my identity, and reclaim my vision of the future.
2. If one of your paintings could whisper something into the ear of its viewer, what would you want it to say?
I want it to tell the stories of the sea; its skin that steals disappearing fragments of light from its environment, carrying with them memories of bodies, borders, landscapes, and even static objects. It shifts them gently, bringing them closer or pushing them further apart, like a silent choreography of memory. I want my paintings not only to immortalize moments, but to let those moments move; to breathe, and even dance.
3. In your work, women appear as luminous beings; sacred, sensual, ethereal. Are they muses, myths, or mirrors of your inner world?
They are all three. They are the archetypes I inherited, the women I’ve loved (my wife Samia), the ones I’ve lost (my mother Nadia), and the ones who continue to inspire me (My daughters Rebecca and Carine). Sometimes they are dreams. Sometimes they are memories. The woman is, to me, both presence and absence; an echo that lingers, a guide, a sanctuary. She embodies resilience and softness, rage and tenderness. Through her, I explore the contradictions of life. In painting her, I find beauty, not as decoration, but as truth.
4. Have you ever destroyed a painting because it revealed too much of you?
I have never destroyed a painting because it revealed too much of me. On the contrary, I believe that the act of revealing is where the power of art lies. Even when a painting exposes my most fragile parts, I let it live, because in that vulnerability, there is truth.
5. Do you believe your art has healed you in ways that words, humans or time could not?
Absolutely. Art doesn’t ask me to explain myself. It lets me hold grief without naming it, joy without reason, and memory without sequence. In that space beyond language and logic, something tender happens, wounds close not because they’re forgotten, but because they’ve finally been witnessed.
