Zakia Knouzi
For Zakia Knouzi, art began in the aftermath of rupture. Nearly two years ago, a series of painful turning points—losing two close family members, facing health challenges, and leaving a marriage that silenced her grief—became the catalysts that stripped away the noise and made space for truth. What had always felt hers could no longer be deferred. Art and poetry became more than expression: they became acts of healing, alchemy, and survival.
Self-taught and instinct-driven, Knouzi works primarily with clay, drawn to its grounding, tactile process. “With clay, it feels like I’m molding life with my own hands,” she says. The long, uncertain process of drying and firing teaches her patience and awe, as each piece emerges from the kiln transformed, often unexpectedly.
Her sculptures often center the female form, reflecting strength, vulnerability, desire, and power. Hollowness, a recurring motif in her busts, becomes a symbol of metamorphosis—identity as fluid, vessels of becoming, containers for both absence and potential. Through torsos, hips, and fragments of the body, she explores the dialogue between presence and absence, object and viewer, past and becoming. Mythology, philosophy, and even alchemy weave through her practice, but her deepest guide is intuitive truth.
Personal experience is at the core of her work. Raised in a strict culture and shaped by a fragmented identity between two countries, her sculptures carry bodily memory of loneliness, love, betrayal, and resilience. Yet while her art begins in the personal, it reaches toward the universal, creating spaces for recognition and emotional resonance. “Art,” she says, “is the attempt to make the invisible visible. It’s all about emotion in the end.”
Knouzi has also published poetry, a practice that parallels her sculpture in its vulnerability and truth-telling. For her, success is felt: if words or clay move the audience, she has succeeded. She is currently working on Aetheris, a collection exploring the interplay of earthly textures and celestial brilliance, blending everyday materials with precious elements to evoke wonder and a sense of cosmic connection.
At the heart of her work is a refusal to compromise vision. “For me, it’s impossible not to stay true to myself,” she explains. “I follow only what stirs my soul, what breathes life into me, and speaks to others, saying: you are seen.”
