As part of a long ancestral line of followers of the Sufi Islamic tradition, Rachid Koraïchi views his multi-disciplinary practice as an extension of prayer and divine reverence. Combining language, scripture, signs, and the spiritual practice of Sufism, this sculptor, painter, and ceramicist has created a signature visual vocabulary of ideographic symbolism and contemplative forms that reference numerous calligraphic traditions and draw on a rich variety of influences from Chinese ideograms to pre-Islamic Berber and Tuareg art forms.

In Sans toi, ni moi ou l’hallucination nostalgique (Without you or me or the nostalgic hallucination), Koraïchi centres his composition on an ideogram in Chinese calligraphy positioned within a faded field of Arabic writing, framed by two vertical bands or scrolls of fragmentary Arabic calligraphy. Reflective of his broader body of work, the piece expresses Koraïchi’s exploration of the links between metaphysics, spirituality, and aesthetics, as his art becomes an exercise in the process of transformation.

Koraïchi studied at the Institute of Fine Arts and the Superior National School of the Arts in Algeria between 1967 and 1977. He later completed his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and the Institut d’Urbanisme in Paris. Rachid Koraïchi lives and works between Tunisia and France.