FROM SAQI BOOKS online...

Mai Ghoussoub (1952-2007)

Our dear friend Mai Ghoussoub, artist, author, playwright and founding director of Saqi died suddenly on 17 February 2007 in London.

Mai was born in 1952 in Lebanon. She studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts/Lebanese University and graduated from the American University of Beirut with a BA in French Literature, before moving to London in 1979, where she studied sculpture at Morley College and the Henry Moore Studio. That same year she and her childhood friend, André Gaspard, founded the Al Saqi Bookshop, which has become a beacon of Arab culture in London, occupying 26 Westbourne Grove for the past twenty-eight years. They ventured into publishing in 1983, founding Saqi, and in 1990 started the Arabic publishing house Dar al-Saqi in Beirut.

Since the 1980s Mai combined her activities as an artist, writer and publisher: ‘I write for my sculptures and I sculpt for my words.’ Her art has been exhibited nationally and internationally. She wrote numerous articles on culture, gender, aesthetics and the Middle East, and is the author of many books in English, Arabic and French. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies, including Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women and Lebanon, Lebanon.

In 2005 she wrote, directed and performed Texterminators at the Lyric and Dominion theatres in London, the Unity Theatre in Liverpool, and the Marignan Theatre in Beirut. It was described as ‘outstanding theatre’ by Time Out. Most recently, her work was featured in the exhibition Beirut Out of War, which she curated with Ara Azad, Suheil Sleiman and Rana Salaam, at the MAN Museum in Liverpool.

‘I’ve never cried for anybody’s death before Mai. Mai lived to fight the Lebanese civil war, and she was living and thinking in the heart of the project that is Lebanon’s only hope of liberation – by establishing a unified civil identity beyond sects; a unified civil culture beyond linguistic and ethnic boundaries, East or West. This morning I will weave the sun as a scarf waving goodbye to Mai.’ Adonis

‘My grief is very great for losing my best friend. She was a pioneer in establishing freedom of expression, and being open to all other cultures.’ Rawas

‘Her life is almost a continuous expression in her sculptures, installations, performances and writings, and her travels and her relationships. She always had something to say, writing and designing in the same spirit and in the same language. She says the same thing either in sculptures or pictures or words. She can always create a way to express herself. Her overwhelming sensitivity and her energy spread without fragmenting. Mai, who was at once very patriotic, was at the same time a woman of the world. She was the daughter of the moment (she was first to present post-modernism in Arabic); but that moment has depth in time, tradition and method; she was being herself without any compromise, but she always cared for everyone.’ Abbas Beydoun

‘The polymorphously perverse young novices indulging in an orgy of lipstick in a convent in Mai Ghoussoub’s gorgeously surreal ‘Red Lips’ are reminiscent of Georges Bataille.’ The Independent (review of Hikayat, 29 September 2006)

‘Words don’t kill, humans do.’ Mai Ghoussoub

I’ll tell you an embarrassing story: when we opened our bookshop we needed addresses for our catalogue mailing list. This was 1979; we were newly arrived in England. We went through the telephone directory for nights on end looking for potential customers, through the listings, looking for the al-something, or the Oriental this or that … I’m afraid many of our catalogues may have landed in Chinese restaurants or Thai sex shops.
–from ‘Beirut, a Visible City on the Road’, Lebanon, Lebanon (2006)

Sculpture

Group Shows
1985 Holland Park Orangerie, London. Selection from Hammersmith & Kensington.
1993 The Visual and the Written. Kufa Gallery, London
1993 Witches. ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art, London)
1993 Mirrors. Gallery 23, Camden, London
1996 Under Different Skies, Copenhagen (Arts Capital of Europe)
1999 Dialogues of the Present, touring exhibition: Bath, Plymouth, London, Brighton
1999 Six Women Show. Pitshanger Manor, Ealing, London
2000 Look Out, touring exhibition: Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Pitshanger Manor Gallery,Wolsey Art Gallery

Installations

1989 Books on Stage, a window shop exhibition, London
1993 Singers/ Dancers. Kufa Gallery, London.
1994 Metal Blues. Argyle Gallery, Portobello, London
1998 Displaces, an installation on the theme of refugees. Shoreditch Town Hall, London
1998 Displaces, Stoke Newington Gallery/Library, London
1999 Readers with Glasses. Word festival, Westminster Libraries
2001 Dressing-Readdressing. Local Artists , London W2
2002 Divas. Comptoir du Marais, Paris
2002 Divas, for Jamil/Jamila. Newcastle Arts College
2002 Divas, for Jamil/Jamila. Kufa Gallery, London
2002 Star of The East. Bluecoats Arts Centre, Liverpool

Performances

1993 Musicians.Theatrical Performance with sculptures, Kufa Gallery