Discover Rex, the Saudi artist blending pop culture with Saudi narratives. Explore his journey, unique style, achievements, and impact on Saudi Arabia's art scene. Learn about his signature works and future projects.
In the fast-moving current of Saudi culture, Rex Chouk has become a north star for a new kind of visual language. His world is candy-toned and mischievous, yet it carries a quiet weight. He can make a city feel like a character and a character feel like a city. What looks like play is often a mirror.
His masked persona keeps the focus where he wants it. On the work. On the characters. On the small details that wink at anyone who has ever navigated a Khaleeji childhood, a Gulf adolescence, and a global adulthood.
Rex wears a mask to pull attention away from his personal biography and toward the world he’s building: a consistent universe of recurring characters, symbols, and bold graphic cues across canvases, prints, murals, and screens. The anonymity creates a useful mystery that lets people project themselves into the work, making it feel communal like street culture, social media, and inside jokes. In this setup, the art isn’t just what he makes; the art is his identity.
Rex Chouk turns the rituals of Gulf life into a playful study of courtship, leisure, and low key vibes, then lets satire do the quiet work of critique. His visual language is crisp and symbolic, a cast of archetypes and cues that invite you in, building a spectacle from stories that slip between the provocative and the beautifully ordinary.
The references are wide, from international politics to the local hip hop scene, and they braid into a portrait of GCC youth culture colored by love, loneliness, and daydreams. The charm is disarming, the pull is real, and you leave thinking about these characters as if they were friends you are eager to meet again.
Rex’s outlook is shaped by movement. Jeddah is an anchor. He's shaped by the city but sharpened by time spent in global art and fashion hubs. That mix gives him a naturally “Saudi-now” voice. He can switch from a local in-joke to refined graphic design without missing a beat, and he treats galleries and consumer spaces (like sneakers) as equally valid places for art. His work also functions like a series with recurring characters and symbols: once you learn his visual “alphabet,” you start spotting the same figures in new moods and contexts. That makes the work rewatchable. You notice more each time, like returning to a favorite animated show.
Every pop universe needs a cast. Rex’s figures are not side notes. They are a cosmology. There is the lovable hero archetype who seems slightly overwhelmed by the size of his dream. There is the cool friend who knows the shortcut. There are mascots that stand in for the city itself, grinning at the skyline like they built it with their own hands. These figures are vehicles for big ideas approached with a light touch.
After spending time inside Rex Chouk’s universe, you start to notice three core leads, and a banner that binds them. In my reading, here’s who they are:
And then there’s the chorus of recurring mascots and icons; camels, satellites, footballs, coffee cups. The supporting extras that carry the jokes and deepen the world-building.
Collaboration is a natural extension of the Rex universe, and his characters travel easily across worlds. With Samsung, he translated his Khaleeji pop into consumer tech through a Flip-branded campaign complete with themed devices and FlipSuit cases. PUMA tapped him for the 2025 Speedcat relaunch in KSA, releasing a limited Chouka vinyl figure tied to in-store purchases at Red Sea Mall, Solitaire Mall, and Nakheel Dammam. For Eyewa, he created a KSA National Day 2024 capsule of totes and stickers that put his illustrations into daily circulation. A long-running creative dialogue with designer Nasiba Hafiz produced a Saudi-made capsule, while community and retail crossovers (from Homegrown Market in Jeddah to pop culture platforms across the Kingdom) keep the work close to its audience.
Rex’s imagery has threaded into major public moments, including references in Saudi Motorsport communications and related industry documents around large-scale city events, with creative tied to installations near the Jeddah track. On the media side, a 2023 Hypebeast Diaries episode spotlighted his narrative aims and Saudi inspirations, while ongoing features in titles like Harper’s Bazaar Arabia, Grazia Middle East, and Sandy Times have helped frame his practice for regional and global audiences.
In recent years Rex has moved between gallery shows, citywide culture programs, and brand-led activations that link art with fashion, sport, and tech. The range is strategic. It places his visual language in spaces where new viewers first discover contemporary art. A young fan might fall in love with a collectible or a T-shirt graphic, then go looking for the larger body of work. A collector might encounter a canvas and later spot the same character smiling from a billboard at a festival. The two paths reinforce each other.
This momentum signals something broader for Saudi art. It shows how a homegrown visual vocabulary can stand beside global pop without translation anxiety. It shows that an artist can speak to the Gulf and to the world in the same breath. It shows that play can be sophisticated and that sophistication can be fun.
Rex Chouk gives contemporary Saudi life a face that feels both intimate and iconic. By keeping himself masked, he lets the art speak as identity, weaving a serial universe led by Choomy, 7uni, and yunnchoomy. The language is crisp and Khaleeji, yet effortlessly global, built from symbols, slang, and a clean graphic rhythm. Humor draws you close. Satire holds you there. You leave with a clearer sense of how love, ambition, and everyday rituals live in the Gulf now.
In a moment when the cultural calendar is full and the skyline keeps changing, Rex offers a steadier meter. He listens to the city and answers in rhythm. He shows that the bright surface can be a serious stage. He builds characters that grow along with the Kingdom. Above all, he reminds us that the most generous art does not lecture. It invites us to play and then surprises us with how much we learn while laughing.
Explore more artist stories that shape Saudi culture at KSA Art.