NADINE ABOU ZAKI is a Lebanese-French sculptor, writer and director. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from Sorbonne-Paris IV and taught Philosophy at the American University of Beirut. She is a researcher on the “Haptic Aesthetics”, "Museums, Accessibility and Disability" and the "Philosophy of Sex and Gender". In 2017, she founded Red Oak non-profit organization.
Taking total obscurity as a platform of experimentation, she sculpts blindfolded by substituting the sense of sight with that of touch, and inviting the visitors to touch her sculptures in the dark in her interactive performances and exhibitions “Please Touch” ("Prière de Toucher"). The performance was mentioned in “Contemporary Art and the Discovery of the Value of Tactility”, a book published by the Omero National Museum of Ancona- Italy.
As a human rights activist, she used arts and culture to help advance the cause of people with disabilities. In 2018, she launched “Doors. Please Touch”, the first of its kind project in Lebanon to facilitate the accessibility of the blind and visually impaired, and the deaf and hard-hearing persons to the National Museum of Beirut and the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MACAM). This project is in partnership with the Lebanese Ministry of Culture, the Omero Museum of Ancona, Italy.
She held a number of performances and solo sculpture exhibitions, and wrote and directed the dance theater performance “The Diary of a Mulberry Tree”.
She was granted the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) for “Elephant in the Dark” (2019), a blindfold Walk performance, and launched “Perceptions”, the first Theater by the Blind and Deaf in Lebanon. She was selected by the Lebanese Ministry of Culture as the sculptor ambassador for Beirut World Book Capital (2009). Her monumental sculptures are installed in front of the Lebanese Ministry of Tourism, and other public places in Lebanon and the UAE.
She has been named “Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques” (Knight of Order of the French Academic Palms) by the French Ministry of National Education (2016), and was awarded the “Prix International de la Laïcité” (The International Secular Award) by the Secular Republican Committee at La Mairie de Paris (2009).
