In a bold and poignant debut at PAD Paris 2025, French-Egyptian-Lebanese designer Omar Chakil unveils Transcendence, a sculptural series presented in collaboration with the iconic Galerie Gastou. The 17-piece collection marks a significant moment in contemporary design—one that bridges antiquity and modernity, memory and material, function and feeling.
At the heart of Chakil’s practice is Egyptian alabaster, a luminous stone once revered by the Pharaohs and long overlooked in modern design. Now, through Chakil’s hands, the stone becomes both relic and revelation. In Transcendence, he carves not just objects but narratives—stories imbued with power, mythology, vulnerability, and sensuality. This is not design for decoration’s sake. This is design as memory, as sculpture, as future artifact.
Chakil’s path to alabaster began in 2017, when he returned to Cairo after a life spent in Paris. Drawn initially to other local materials, he was urged by a friend to reconsider alabaster—a material once central to Egypt’s cultural heritage, now largely relegated to souvenir trade. Intrigued by its soft glow and fragile resilience, Chakil saw not a cliché, but a possibility.
“Alabaster wasn’t my first choice,” he admits, “but when I began to work with it, I realized its otherworldly quality—almost futuristic, yet ancient. That tension is what drives my work.”
His first alabaster pieces, created in 2018, laid the foundation for a dialogue between past and present. That dialogue comes to fruition in Transcendence, where the stone is elevated from tradition to timelessness.
While Chakil has long explored abstraction and metaphysical symbolism, Transcendence leans deliberately into Ancient Egyptian iconography. With encouragement from Victor Gastou, Chakil tackled head-on the challenge of reinterpreting cultural symbols that are at once deeply familiar and often reduced to kitsch.
“There’s risk in using symbols like the scarab or crocodile,” he says. “But they endure for a reason. They hold transformative power.”
The crocodile, representing the god Sobek, is reimagined as a marble bench—its fossil-like tail cast from a Nile crocodile scan, textured with embedded quartz to evoke ancient scales. The result is an object that exudes power and quiet tension, blending mythology and minimalism.
The scarab, long a symbol of rebirth, appears in the Resurrection Table, a circular form carved from alabaster, onyx, and marble sourced from Egypt, Italy, and Iran—three cultures bound by history, material, and meaning.
The Uraeus, the protective cobra, resurfaces in a piece that meditates on fertility and guardianship. Chakil, who once designed a birth chair, uses this motif to continue a narrative on creation, strength, and reverence for what is often feared.
Though trained as a musician before turning to design, Chakil’s intuitive process echoes that of a sculptor or poet. He lets the materials guide him, particularly alabaster, which conceals hidden fractures and geological mysteries. “You never truly know the stone until you carve it,” he says.
That unpredictability becomes part of the final form. No two pieces are the same. Chakil refuses to replicate veining patterns or force symmetry. “Each block has a story—it’s not meant to be controlled but translated.”
This reverence for material and form puts Chakil in a lineage of designer-sculptors who resist categorization. While many draw hard lines between art and design, Chakil prefers to blur them. “For me, storytelling is a function. And emotion is design. Why separate them?”
(Image credit: B. Doss)
Transcendence is not a “collection” in the seasonal sense—it is a body of work meant to endure. Chakil bristles at the notion of trend cycles or disposable design. His pieces are made to be lived with, not just looked at.
“I hope these works become future artifacts,” he reflects. “Objects that carry meaning, that accumulate stories. We are too quick to discard what no longer feels new. I want to create permanence—not nostalgia, but continuity.”
This commitment to enduring design extends to user interaction. At previous exhibitions, Chakil placed signs reading Please Touch—an invitation rarely extended in art and design settings. “Tactility is crucial,” he says. “These pieces are meant to be used, to be felt.”
(Image credit: B. Doss)
Galerie Gastou, known for its sophisticated curation at the intersection of art and design, marks a full-circle moment for Chakil. As a young boy in Paris, he would walk past the gallery in awe, unsure if its contents were furniture or sculpture. “It felt mythical,” he recalls. “I never imagined I’d be here.”
Now, with Transcendence, Chakil joins the ranks of designers who’ve helped shape the gallery’s legacy. The collaboration was sparked by Gastou’s appreciation of Chakil’s alabaster work—and deepened by their shared respect for materials and meaning.
As PAD Paris 2025 opens its doors, Chakil’s Transcendence stands as both debut and declaration—a calling to reimagine heritage not as nostalgia, but as a source of radical possibility. With alabaster as his medium and mythology as his muse, Chakil crafts a future that honors the past not by imitating it, but by listening to its echoes.
Photography by B. Doss.
PAD Paris runs from April 2–6, 2025.
