Artist eL Seed in the capital to connect with youth
The muralist will collaborate with children in the capital, with work starting this weekend,
The artist eL Seed describes two women who sat outside their homes, separated by a street, facing his staggered mural in Cairo.
Although they were sisters, they were no longer on speaking terms. But little by little, he explains, they moved their chairs closer together, until one day, they were talking.
“One guy in the neighbourhood said to me,” eL Seed recounts: “Your project is a project of peace. It brought people together.” He pauses and clarifies: “It’s not the art piece that brings people together, it’s the experience that you create around the art piece that brings people together.”
eL Seed, who is based in Dubai, has become well known for his expressive calligraphic forms, spray-painted in cities across the world and in areas – such as the DMZ border between South and North Korea – that are potential conflict zones. His work is a kind of hybrid between street art and classical Arabic calligraphy: fat, angular letters outlined in bright red or blue, executed directly on buildings.
He is now collaborating with 20 children in Abu Dhabi to produce his first mural in the capital, stretching across the wall of the Abu Dhabi Municipality building, near Madinat Zayed, in an event that kicked off yesterday. Over the next two Saturdays – March 3 and 10 – they will paint verses from a poem by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, dedicated to Sheikha Fatima, the Mother of the Nation.
The project launches The Art Movement by the Abu Dhabi-based Fatima bint Hazza Cultural Foundation, which is involved in bringing literacy and education to children in the Emirates. It has produced more than 150 books – in Arabic, English as well as Braille versions – and wrestles directly with the question of how to reach children in a fast-changing environment of new technology, when children are as likely to reach for an iPad as for a bound paper book. The foundation, for example, has also produced 40 educational apps.
Maysoon Barber, the executive director of the foundation, says it now wants to wow children – to stop and startle them with the presence of art. “We aren’t seeking conventional ways,” she says. “We want to integrate art into their lives using huge canvases – the size of an entire building.”
eL Seed’s project is the first commission in the foundation’s new programme, which will involve other collaborations in the future.
The children selected to participate – between 8 and 13 years old – reflect the geographical diversity of Abu Dhabi: they are drawn from the American International School in Abu Dhabi; the eight schools that comprise the Emirates National School; and the Rosary School. The students will also take photography and videography courses, and a module on journalism that will track and analyse the reception of the mural.
For the wider public, there is the chance to watch the work in progress with entertainment, food trucks and art activities set up near the Abu Dhabi Municipality building over the three days that eL Seed and the children will work on the mural.
Social responsibility is a key part of eL Seed’s work. “I’m not here to create something aesthetically beautiful,” he says. “I’m here to give to the community and to inspire.”
His process of arriving at Arabic calligraphy also reflects his own nuanced cultural position.
He was born in Tunisia and grew up in France and didn’t learn to speak and read Arabic until he was 18. I asked him why he taught himself Arabic at the late age.
“It’s a question of identity. I didn’t feel French in France, and I didn’t feel Tunisian in Tunisia,” he explains.
“I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought, I look like someone called Mohammed, not like someone called Jean Paul.”
“The funny thing is Arabic calligraphy made me accept my French identity,” he says. “Now, I say I’m French. But if you asked me 20 years ago, I would never say I’m French. The more I was digging into my Arabic roots, the more I realised I would never be able to do what I am doing today if I wasn’t French at all. Now, I feel fully both. I feel fully French. Fully Tunisian. The world makes you feel that you have to choose sometimes, but you don’t choose between your mom and your dad. I’m French-Tunisian, Tunisian-French.”
“But I don’t define myself by nationality,” he continues. “Identity is deeper than just a territory. It’s more about what I’ve done, where I come from, in terms of place, neighbourhood, where I want to go, where I went, my dream. This is how I define myself. This is my identity.”
His first mural in the capital will stretch across the wall of the Abu Dhabi Municipality building
eL Seed’s mural will be painted on the Abu Dhabi Municipality Building on March 3 and March 10, 2018, with food and entertainment from 11am to 8pm near Gate 1