Of Lebanese origin and born in Syria in 1979, Walid El Masri initially trained as a mosaicist before enrolling in the Damascus Faculty of Fine Arts. Having earned his degree in 2005, he trained at the Darat Al Funun Summer Academy in Jordan, studying under the artist Marwan. A well-known painter based in Damascus, Walid El Masri exhibited regularly in Syria, London, Paris, Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf States. After moving to France in 2011, he has continued his artistic work as a painter and draughtsman. Walid El Masri also took part in group exhibitions at the Busan Museum of Art in South Korea (2014); the Institut du monde arabe in Paris (2014 and 2018); the MUCEM in Marseille (2014); and the Institut des Cultures d’Islam in Paris (2020).
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Among his early series, Chairs (2004-2011) displayed a vigorous hand marked by expressionist gestuality. The existentialist dimension was already felt in these empty seats evoking solitude and absence. The series Cocoons (2014-2017), dating from his arrival in France, was a discreet and laconic reaction to the violent events then occurring in Syria, and to his own exile. Countless white, oblong shapes, suspended from the branches of a tree standing between heaven and earth, constitute an eerie presence. What are these bodies, enveloped in large cocoons, and what are they destined to become? Here everything seems to be latent, suspended, painted in an explosive palette of tart, sharp tones. “The Cocoon is both life and death, explains the artist. The worm can choose one of two paths: to be reborn as a butterfly or to be killed for the silk it makes. What it created, in order to be transformed and fly away freely, thus becomes its shroud”.
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In the Children series from 2015, naked babies with bloated faces float in large canvases with solid grounds. Their dark, bulging eyes appear to be sightless. They do not seem to be interested in the ball or toy right next to them, or perhaps they are incapable of grasping them - a thinly veiled reference to the ongoing tragedy that has struck even very young children, and to whom Walid El Masri wanted to restore their innocence and insouciance. In the most recent series, The Peacocks, begun in 2018, a majestic peacock appears in the centre of the canvas. “Its only possible defence is its beauty and strange, sorrowful cry, like the call of a lonely man, he remarks. I personally feel a reverent fear of this sacred creature, which often appears in the stories told by our ancestors and in their legends.”