Green Prophet loves eL Seed, the French-Tunisian artist is the Arab world’s Banksy. He specializes in what he calls ‘calligraffiti’, a brilliant mashup of spray paint techniques and traditional Arabic calligraphy on an outsize scale.

eL Seed painted Tunisia’s tallest minaret and covered hoarding that wrapped Paris’s Pont des Arts “love lock” Bridge. He’s collaborated with Louis Vuitton on a series of scarves and painted luggage. Now he’s tagged nearly 50 buildings in a poor area of Cairo with a new mural – with stunning results.

Six impoverished communities ring Cairo, collectively called “Garbage City”.  Their 60,000 residents make their living primarily through informal waste collection. The inhabitants, mostly Coptic Christians, are called zabaleen – Egyptian Arabic for ‘garbage people’. Considered squatter settlements, the largest is Mokattam, whose collectors process an estimated 30 percent of Cairo’s trash, which is about 15 percent of the entire country’s waste volume.

eL Seed selected the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood for his project. Garbage lines its narrow streets, fills ground level garages, mid-level apartments, and open-air roofs. It’s not a matter of lax waste management; these people actively collect the trash, hauling it in to sort through, then recycling and selling every salvageable item. It’s how they survive.

The area, known for extreme poverty and high illiteracy rates, has low school enrollment as most children are steered towards the family recycling businesses to help make ends meet. Young zabaleen boys typically accompany their fathers on daily garbage collections around Cairo while girls remain at home with their mothers to manually sort the recyclables. A family of four earns around $2 a day.

In this project, called Perception, the artist questions the level of judgement and misconception society can impose upon a community that does not conform to a common norm. These people have collected Cairo’s trash for decades.  They’ve developed what is likely the world’s most efficient and profitable recycling system, yet they are viewed as dirty, therefore marginalized and segregated.

eL Seed says on his website that the community treated him and his team like family. “It was one of the most amazing human experiences I have ever had. They are generous, honest, and strong people.” He note that they do not refer to themselves as ‘garbage people’, instead, “They don’t live in the garbage but from the garbage; and not their garbage, but the garbage of the whole city. They are the ones who clean the city of Cairo.”

Painting the mural was a massive project involving dozens of buildings, painstakingly coordinated so that it could only be seen in its entirety from a specific mountain vantage point.

The artist is also a TED Fellow. He told TED.com: “I had never done an anamorphic mural before, but I chose this technique here because I wanted to raise the topic of how people tend to judge others without knowing them at all, with wrong ideas based on their own paradigms or on something they’d seen in the media. I wanted to create a symbol that forced people to look from the correct angle in order to see clearly.”

The purpose of the project was to get people to see the neighborhood in a different light. The words he painted come from a Coptic Christian bishop, “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.”

eL Seed has painted structures in Europe, America, and across the Middle East promoting messages of cross-cultural understanding.

The post Arab world’s “Banksy” murals 50 buildings in Egypt slum appeared first on Green Prophet.

Ariel Zuckerman and Eran Shimshovitz screwed large wooden panels onto exterior walls near their workshop, choosing specific sites popular with Tel Aviv street artists.  Then they waited, checking progress early every morning. At first, the boards were ignored, but the artists soon succumbed.  Zuckerman told Slate that they wanted to achieve a spontaneous result, and so left no instructions for the artists nor did they publicize the project in advance.

Timid pencil sketches were followed by dabs of paint and the artwork evolved. Days passed, and when the design duo were satisfied with a piece, they unscrewed it and returned to their workshop.

They milled the panels into smaller components, fashioning them into a series of simply-shaped furniture. Their first piece was the “Zerifin 35” console (see lead image), named after the street where the graffiti art was made. The vibrantly colored series is called “Street Capture” and it includes a console, coffee table, and end tables.

The designers view the project as a way to preserve the “spirit of a disaffected area of disappearing wood workshops“. The neighborhood is returning to life as young craftsmen set up new businesses in abandoned storefronts; after dark, the area turns from work to play with organically arranged music and art events.

In instances where the graffiti artists signed their work, Zuckerman contacted them to ask permission to sell the resulting furniture;  the artists get 15 percent of profits. He said that since word has gotten out, the graffiti experiment is now “more of a collaboration”, with plans to produce a series of limited-edition tables featuring different paintings.

The project can be viewed as a brilliant exploitation of the commons; converting public walls into a factory (with a highly organic workforce) that creates sell-able art for re-use as functional furniture. Collaboration is key to its success. See the process in play in the video below:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/IdZKRxuwhHU[/youtube]

What do the artists think about seeing their paintings deconstructed? “The artists usually love it because the result is surprising and new to them,” Zuckerman said, adding that the furniture brought a new dimension to their two-dimensional paintings.

Images from Slate and Yoav Gurin

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Combine urban plant life with graffiti and serve up free smiles with an immediate reminder of the best aspects of humanity – kindness, creativity, and humor. These images are from cities around the world; but the idea could easily transplant to Irbid (Jordan), Gedera (Israel), Ramallah (West Bank), and Daara (Syria).

Who needs Prozac when you’ve got cheap paint and wild plants?

Good news in the Middle East is muffled by urgent updates on conflict in Iraq, Syria, Israel and Gaza. Switch channels only to get freaked by facts on MERS and Ebola, twin epidemics looming over the region.

On a slow news day climate change grabs the headlines; coverage of extreme weather, record-breaking drought, and resulting food shortages and price hikes. And Islamic State (IS) trumps all. Incessant negativity demands a counterpoint – positive reminders of what’s good in us all.

So how about a challenge?  Let’s start a movement.  See what these anonymous artists have done in their neighborhoods, then take a deep breath and assess your own surroundings.

If your hopeless with a paintbrush, enlist a capable friend – some of the simplest designs are the most brilliant!

It’s a twist on guerrilla gardening: don’t change nature, just enhance it with some paint. Then take a picture and share it with us. Disease and terror can go viral, but so can happiness.  Game on!

Green Prophet has brought your stories of other stealth public art projects like the painted public stairways in Lebanon and Turkey and the art collective Dispatch Beirut that repairs cracks and holes in Lebanon with Lego bricks. Why stop there?

Now that everyone’s been doused with ice water, it’s time for a new communal dare. Go out and do your bit to cheer up your community. Let’s express ourselves in public – it’s a most powerful form of social media.

Images from Bored Panda, specific credits in order of appearance to Sandrine Boulet, EVOL, David Zinn, Sandrine Boulet, Nuxuno Xän, unknown,  WD street art, Oak Oak, Oak Oak, Banksy, and Nuxuno Xän

The post Play with nature and lift Middle East moods (PHOTOS) appeared first on Green Prophet.

More than 100 graffiti artists were invited to Tunisia as part of the Djerbahood project – an inventive rehabilitation initiative that uses street art to turn a dusty village into an inspiring open air gallery.

We have watched with great interest as Tunisia’s graffiti culture has grown since post-Jasmine revolution. Artists like VA-JO and El Seed have dazzled us with great designs, along with a unifying sociocultural message that spins the stereotype of the anarchist street artist.

And while the political landscape in Tunisia remains tenuous, graffiti artists appear to have significant freedom and support to share their work.

Related: Tunisia’s tallest minaret sprayed with El Seed Calligraffiti

In particular, 150 artists from 30 different countries were invited to participate in the Djerbahood, where they painted old, dilapidated and perfectly good buildings with their signature style. Famous Belgian artist ROA was among the artists whose playful work incorporates certain domed buildings into his pieces – like the large octopus with a bulbous head.

El Seed, who is Tunisian, was also present for the massive paint out. And we are also particularly enamored with the artist from Mexico, Curiot, who added a significant splash of color to the village.

The site of one of the world’s oldest and most famous synagogues, the El Ghriba synagogue, Djerba is the largest island of North Africa at 198 square miles.

Support for this inspiring project came from the Embassy of France in Tunisia, and Boga Cidre, Airbus, One Tech, Digard, SEH Legal and Yosr Ben Ammar.

A municipality in Morocco has similarly used graffiti in order to stem urban decay and to find idleness among the youth.

:: Djerbahood

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Retired forestry engineer Huseyin Cetinel decided to brighten up a few Istanbul neighborhoods, slapping $800 bucks’ worth of rainbow-colored paint on public walkways over the course of four days.

His guerrilla artworks (which were probably inspired by the guerrilla painters in Beirut last year) were an instant hit with the local community.  Images of the vibrant stairs have gone around the Twittersphere, and were soon picked up by national television and international newspapers.

Then the government came in and painted everything gray.

Cetinel started with a massive Findikli staircase in the central district of Beyoglu  (see the artist seated on those steps, above).

Tourists quickly descended on the site for colorful photo ops.  A pair of newlyweds used the artwork as backdrop to their wedding photos. New bride Gamze Ozmermer told the New York Times, “The air of conflict that our world is caught in, all those human losses…misery needs healing. Colorful scenes might be a remedy.”

The LGBT community also applauded the caper, recognizing their trademark rainbow flag in the work, but the 64-year-old artist sidestepped politics, telling Everywhere Taksim, “I didn’t do it for a group or as a form of activism. I did it to make people smile.”

He completed his painting on August 27, and two days later, without warning, the Beyoglu municipality sent in crews to cover the colors with a coat of dull gray.

When local television reporters sought Cetinel for his reaction, he pointed out that all of nature is brightly colored. “Where does this gray come from?” he asked. “Did we have another Pompeii and get flooded with ash?”

[youtube]http://youtu.be/NcrAEBOq3OA[/youtube]

Heavy commentary on social media – having just discovered the painting – quickly turned angry. Using Twitter to mobilize, residents came out in large numbers to restore the steps. Additional stairs and walkways were painted in nearby neighborhoods. Finally, the municipality also joined the effort.

Istanbul is called “the city of seven hills” with dozens of public stairways threading through ancient neighborhoods for pedestrians seeking to avoid heavy car traffic. It’s understandable that the effort to enliven the footpaths would be popular.

Stairs painted in Beirut last summer:

To the young, liberal and educated Turks who supported the Taksim demonstrations, the rainbow stairs incident seemed yet another sign of intolerance and a usurpation of their right to public space. It was wise for the municipality to rectify their actions, offsetting a new wave of anti-government protests.

All images from Facebook and Twitter

The post Turkey’s Gentlest Protestor Paints Public Stairs in Joyous Color appeared first on Green Prophet.

Jinhao’s parents have since apologized on his behalf and said he cried all night after learning of the vigilante threats against him. The Chinese media seized upon this opportunity to remind Chinese tourists to be very careful, that they represent their homeland when traveling abroad. But there is a fear that vigilantes will deepen the damage caused by this senseless action.

The good news is that Egyptian minister of antiquities Ahmed Eissa told Ahram online that restoration is possible. Luxor’s head of antiquities, Mansour Boreik later said that the damage was not deep and that the relief has been restored.

A glance at YouTube, or any reality television illustrates the timeless human craving for fame and self-expression. This expression can take many forms, from the words “Hamad was here” scrawled across a desert and visible from Space to protest graffiti, to peaceful illusions of a better world. But senseless destruction of valuable parts of cultural history is something we need to stop before we completely lose touch with the roots of civilization.

The post 3500 year-old Egyptian Relief Vandalized by Chinese Youth, Restored appeared first on Green Prophet.

Sometimes graffiti can be seen from space. In Tunisia it graces the country’s tallest minaret. In Lebanon, they are making green graffiti for the city streets. And Egyptians have converted military barriers into trompe l’oeil streetscapes. Afghan artist Malina Suliman finds her inspiration in southern Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and one of the most dangerous places in the world. She aims to change the cultural environment through sculpture and painting that depicts the challenges of her war-weary generation.

Born and raised in Kabul, Suliman moved to Pakistan in 2007 to study with Art Council Karachi. She returned to Kabul and its nascent art scene, joining local art association Berang.  The group works to promote the arts in her deeply conservative hometown.

“Many people had never seen an art installation. Some were offended and others were hurt because they’d experienced [he pain of the subject matter] before,” Suliman said to Al Arabiya, speaking of  her painting “War and Chaos” which depicts the aftermath of a suicide bombing.

Suliman’s artwork is drawing attention in the Afghan capital, and internationally.  Last year, she was invited to President Hamid Karzai’s palace: he’s also from Kandahar.

She describes her untitled  painting of birds flying above the mountains as, “symbolic of how we rise to see a world beyond the mountains that surrounds us when we are educated.”

The image above is a sculpture she created of a child missing a leg. She says on her website, “Children in Afghanistan are often forgotten by their families or just left as victims to fend for themselves so I wanted to capture their pain in the sculpture. But really the message I wanted to get across was that nothing is forever, and as Afghans we are reminded of that daily. We’re constantly in fear that today might be the day I fall, today may be the day I die.”

Her exhibit in Kandahar, where the Taliban and tribal elders dominate public opinion, was the first in three decades. She drew a mostly male crowd, including Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa. “I was taken aback by her work. I had only seen great art abroad, but never here,” Wesa told Reuters. “I hope it persuades more women to do the same.”

Thirty years of war following the 1979 Soviet invasion sent Afghanistan’s art scene into hibernation. But in the past decade, with a weakened Taliban, the arts are reemerging in Afghan’s largest cities.  Al Arabiya reports that the western city of Herat has art studios on offer, and northern Mazar-e-Sharif is growing a lively graffiti scene.

Modern, provocative, inexpensive to produce and widely accessible to viewers, graffiti is increasingly visible throughout the Middle East. Her art collective runs group workshops in the art form, but Suliman’s been known to venture out alone, at night, using a flashlight to illuminate her work site. Typical behavior for graffiti artists (think UK’s Banksy and Tunisian-born El Seed) but add in the Taliban and it’s a very different picture.

Last year, Suliman joined the all-male Kandahar Fine Art Association (KFAA), which opened Kandahar’s first art gallery with funding from The Ministry of Information and Culture.  Her involvement has spurred more female artists to participate, but risks remain real.

“One of our biggest fears is that people will mistake us for creating art for foreigners or working with NGOs. People who work with NGOs get shot without question in Kandahar,” she said.  Suliman has received phone threats and the Taliban have criticized her.

But one of Suliman’s greatest challenges lies at home. “The night of my first exhibit my family told me ‘if you go, don’t come back’,” she said. While her sisters and mother now support her ambition and passion, her father and brothers are strongly opposed.

Last year, working with KFAA, Suliman taught Kandahar’s first contemporary arts workshop and participated in Helmand’s first ever first art exhibitions. Future Projects include workshops in sculpture and graphite drawing.  “My target with graphite is that Afghans wear it around their eyes, and by using graphite in art, this might change their views and minds.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTRJ3dy-eeY]

Suliman’s work knows no limits.  She uses traditional paints on canvas, spray cans on walls and rock, and broken glass, tree shavings, and whatever interesting trash she picks up in multimedia collage. She believes that any piece of scrap can be turned into art.

She has a profound passion for her work. Her long-term goal is to travel throughout Afghanistan, conducting workshops, introducing future artists to drawing, painting, sculpting and graffiti. Her immediate goal is to create a platform of expression for a generation whose voices often go unheard. For more about this creative and courageous young woman, check out her website.

 Images from Malina Suliman’s website

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]]> https://www.greenprophet.com/2013/02/fighting-the-taliban-with-paint-draft/feed/ 1 https://www.greenprophet.com/2012/09/tunisias-tallest-minaret-sprayed-with-el-seed-calligraffiti/ Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:45:32 +0000 http://www.greenprophet.com/?p=82996 Jara Mosque in Gabes boasts the tallest minaret in all of Tunisia and now it is covered in el Seed’s signature calligraffiti. Exactly one year after the Jasmine revolution, the French/Tunisian graffiti artist took on his largest project to date in creative protest against the intolerance shown by both artists and hard line Islamists since […]

The post Tunisia’s Tallest Minaret Sprayed With el Seed Calligraffiti appeared first on Green Prophet.

]]> Jara Mosque in Gabes boasts the tallest minaret in all of Tunisia and now it is covered in el Seed’s signature calligraffiti. Exactly one year after the Jasmine revolution, the French/Tunisian graffiti artist took on his largest project to date in creative protest against the intolerance shown by both artists and hard line Islamists since President Ben Ali’s infamous ouster. It is also the first time he has worked on a vertical wall.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKNTkG5dr4A[/youtube]

This artistic three minute film co-directed by Kafi Films and Da Fox In Da Box unveils the spirit of el Seed’s Jara Mosque mural project.

To those of us in the Middle East who are concerned with creativity and community, el Seed is something of a hero. We’ve featured his work previously but this latest project in Tunisia’s southern industrial city Gabes is definitely one of his most exciting.

His goal as an artist in general and with this particular project is to fight intolerance, to promote unity and love in a country that is unravelling at the seams following the rise of long-suppressed ultraconservative Islamists.

“The objective is to inspire people from different backgrounds,” el Seed said in the video above. “To come together, to bring love and to unite.”

Sponsored by the Barjeel Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates, el Seed worked with a local organization called Al Khaldounia to obtain permission to create this enormous mural of peace. A whopping 47 meters tall and 10 meters wide, the Quranic verse covers two sides of the minaret.

This is what it says:

“Oh humankind, we have created you from a male ad a female and made people and tribes so you may know each other.”

Executed in stylized Arabic script, this powerful message neutralizes the hateful discourse that has been populating the airwaves in recent days.

“I hope that this artistic wall on the minaret will help to revive the city, and especially tourism in Gabes,” said Slah Thebet, Imam of Jara Mosque.

All images taken from el Seed’s Facebook page.

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]]> https://www.greenprophet.com/2012/01/the-bedouins-skate-tunisia/ Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:42:01 +0000 http://www.greenprophet.com/?p=64823 The Bedouins are a group of skaters and artists who are empowering post-revolutinary Tunisian youth. When Nathan Gray and his posse of skateboarders and street artists collectively known as “The Bedouins” were scouting out the perfect place to build a skate park in post-revolutionary Tunisia, some of the locals suggested they inhabit Imed Trabelsi’s abandoned […]

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]]> The Bedouins are a group of skaters and artists who are empowering post-revolutinary Tunisian youth.

When Nathan Gray and his posse of skateboarders and street artists collectively known as “The Bedouins” were scouting out the perfect place to build a skate park in post-revolutionary Tunisia, some of the locals suggested they inhabit Imed Trabelsi’s abandoned mansion.

Once the glittering home of the country’s former Construction Minister and nephew-in-law of ousted dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the building and grounds had been trashed by protestors during the Jasmine revolution, so a team of skaters and locals set about converting the place into an inspiring skate and art park. It is also an important location for PUSH Tunisia – a documentary scheduled to make its official debut later this year.

Adaptive reuse

Trabelsi’s swimming pool was filled to the gills with rubbish when The Bedouins came upon it, but within a day it was spotless and equipped with concrete concave cambers repurposed from broken pillars that allow skaters to perform their tricks.

Gray told The Guardian in a recent profile that “everyone showed up and liked the idea of converting the place into something anybody could skate and enjoy. The locals told us they’d help out however we needed them to. They didn’t know hot to build it, but they were down to make it happen.”

Egyptian street artist Yehia Ossama put the finishing touches on this inspiring new urban space with a mural entitled “Al Arab,” which means “The Arabs.” His idea was to honor everyone in the region who has sacrificed their personal security and often their lives for the benefit of a better future.

Films that inspire

This is not the first time Gray has entered a beleaguered zone intent on uplifting disadvantaged or traumatized youth. While he was in university, he traveled to Bangladesh and donated a pile of skateboards and lessons to slum dwellers. Later he returned and lived with his new friends for a while and filmed the documentary “Smile.”

Then, during the Lebanese war in 2006, he gathered Arab and Jew skaters together – “people who aren’t supposed to like each other” – and filmed a second documentary called SOUR aimed at bridging a cultural divide during one of the most divisive periods of the region’s history.

PUSH Tunisia will profile the characters who are being transformed by The Bedouins’ most recent creative outreach program. Each person’s unique history will be chronicled, as well as their response to the revolution and their thoughts about Tunisia’s future.

Creating awareness

“Although the emphasis will be about skateboarding there is also an important element of connecting African, Arab, and American cultures, inspiring those affected by conflict, and creating a sense of awareness of the current events happening in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt,” according to The Bedouins’ online literature.

Gray hopes that in addition to establishing a platform for the locals to express themselves, the documentary will raise awareness of the people affected by the Arab Spring uprisings – both then and now. They received support from skateboarders, NGOs, and even the American embassy in Tunisia to make this vision a reality.

If you’re in the area, try to catch a preview screening of PUSH – one of the most exciting developments to come out of the new Tunisia.

:: The Guardian

images taken from PUSH Tunisia’s Facebook page

More Creative Arts Projects in the Middle East:

Balyolu: Turkey’s First Honey Tasting Tour

Israeli Artist Transforms Rockets into Roses

Zabaleen Film Portrays Cairo’s Garbage City People

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