Wasma'a Khalid Chorbachi is an American-Iraqi artist.
Personal background
She was born in 1944 in
Cairo to Iraqi parents,
living and working in the United States, is a
ceramicist, calligrapher, and painter. She is considered both as a "famous Arab American female artist" and as a "specialist in Islamic art"
Selected exhibitions
Solo exhibitions have been held in Beirut, 1966, 68, and 70; Florence, 1967; Abu Dhabi, 1976; Jedda, 1981; Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983; London, 1984 and 85; Al-Khubar, Saudi Arabia, 1990;
Sackler Museum
The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...
, 2001. She participated to the group exhibition ''Forces of change'' presented in 1994 at the
National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...
, Washington, where her work was described as "abstract expressionist".
Educational pursuits
Her doctoral thesis in the history of Islamic art from Harvard University, ''Beyond the symmetries of Islamic geometric patterns : the science of practical geometry and the process of Islamic design'', made a "pioneering use of tessellation theory for the analysis of angular interlacing patterns". She directed and designed the book ''
Issam El-Said: Artist and Scholar'' published in 1989 by the Issam El-Said Foundation. She taught and published on Islamic geometry. She is an instructor at the Ceramics Program of the Office for the Arts at
Harvard University.
Museums
Her ceramic pieces have been acquired by notable museums around the world such as
The British Museum
The Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts where a 2019 gallery re-install includes a video interview with the artist alongside one of her pieces;
[Harvard Art Museums /Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger, Arther M. Sackler Museum]
Beit Al Qur'an, Bahrain, among others.
See also
* Arabesque
* Iraqi art
* Islamic art
* Islamic calligraphy
* List of Iraqi artists
* List of Iraqi women artists
References
External links
Art by Chorbachi at Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts
An Islamic Pentagonal Seal
coauthored by Wasma'a Khalid Chorbachi in ''Fivefold Symmetry'',1992
Wasma'a Khalid Chorbachi, by Raquel Wharton Rohr excerpted from vol 1. number 3 Spring 2009 of Sgraffito, the Harvard Ceramics Program newsletter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chorbachi, Wasmaa Khalid
1944 births
American people of Iraqi descent
American women painters
American women ceramists
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Iraqi calligraphers
Iraqi ceramists
Iraqi women painters
Iraqi painters
Living people
Women calligraphers
Iraqi women ceramists
21st-century American women