coffee with series | leena kheir
to kick off our series of 'coffee with' we sat down with leena and asked her a few questions about her interests, the meaning of home and what inspires her when pursuing creativity.
which artists or designers inspire you?
i find that i’m drawn to sculptural, monolithic works of architecture – i’m particularly drawn to concrete, stone and brick. some of the architects of my favourite buildings are alvaro siza, raphael moneo and tadao ando. ando’s museums on naoshima island are some of the most stunning buildings I’ve had the pleasure of exploring. moneo’s museo nacional de arte romano merida was one of the few buildings that took my breath away when i entered it – i instantly felt dwarfed by the scale of the towering brick arches overhead.
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amu - soft pastel on paper |
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the nile - acrylic on canvas |
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| leena wears the luan dress in white stripe silk |
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what’s something that means home to you? sudanese households are big on bakhoor. bakhoor is an incense borne from burning perfumed sandalwood on hot coals in a clay vessel called a mubkhar. where many other middle eastern cultures light up bakhoor for special occasions and for guests, my family house tended to be perfumed by sudanese bakhoor every day, so crossing the threshold from outside to indoors was a complete sensory transformation of surroundings – slow floating clouds of incense, and the scent of sudan in the air. i dedicated several chapters in my architectural thesis to how the ritual of bakhoor can influence the design of a home and have since started making my own sculptural mubkhars. |
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hand crafted mubkhar by leena kheir |
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what kind of clothes do you gravitate towards? i tend to wear minimal cuts and gravitate to a looser fit. i find that the colour spectrum I’m attracted to in art– sandy, earthy hues, olive greens, maroons and every shade of burnt orange - tend to be the colours that most catch my eye in fashion. my sister accurately refers to the colours I’m drawn to as “solange colours.” |
leena wears the luan dress in white stripe silk
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what activity most resonates with you right now?
i’ve always been an avid reader, but my reading dropped off pretty badly when i started university – replaced by watching easily digestible sitcoms while making architectural models and drawings. i’m picking it up again now, but for the most part i’ve been reading non-fiction books about race, culture and identity politics – a subject i’m becoming increasingly interested in as time passes.
a great book I finished recently was “brit(ish)” by afua hirsch.
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leena's architecture work
name an interest that’s remained consistent over the various stages of your life, and in what ways has time changed what appeals to you about this interest?
i come from a film loving family. watching movies as a family was a regular activity at home. my dad didn’t want to wait long before showing us his favourites, so i was watching movies like the godfather, the Usual Suspects, last of the mohicans and tombstone from the age of about 8 onwards. of course, as time passed, i became more sensitive to beautiful cinematography, and powerful stories and scripts – so, although my love for film is deeper than it’s ever been, i’m experiencing those awe inspiring, goose bump inducing moments during films less and less. that being said, when they do happen, i can think about them for days afterwards.
one of the most visually stunning films I’ve seen in recent years was Tom Ford’s “nocturnal animals”; a movie that i think was a stunning celebration of fashion, architecture and art.
