Art Flourishes on the Walls of Morocco

Varieties

September 28th, 5:42am

Asharq Al-Awsat

Moroccan street artist Omar Lhamzi works on a mural during the "Jidar" street art festival in the capital Rabat, on September 20, 2021. (Photo by FADEL SENNA / AFP)

Artist Omar Lhamzi donned a bright yellow vest and paint-splattered shoes, selected a brush and set to work on his latest canvas -- the wall of a house in Morocco's seaside capital Rabat. Lhamzi is one of a new generation of artists whose murals are changing the face of Morocco's cities. A wander through Rabat's avenues and alleyways reveals an array of freshly painted works, in which larger-than-life fantasy creatures co-inhabit with realistic portraits and scenes of daily life. Their creators flocked from across the North African kingdom and beyond to Rabat last week for Jidar -- Arabic for "wall" -- a festival dedicated to street art. Lhamzi used the side of a house in the working-class district of Yaacoub Al Mansour for his latest work, a man with six ears and green and pink skin floating in darkness, with clouds that echo Vincent van Gogh's "Starry Night". The 25-year-old, who goes by the alias Bo3bo3, completed his first murals in the seaside city of Agadir four years ago. But he had not been expecting it to become his main field when he graduated in 2018 from the prestigious National School of Fine Arts in the northern city of Tetouan. "I never imagined that my work would be visible in the public space," AFP quoted him as saying. Today, however, he covers walls with bright colors, creating a surrealist world full of references to skating and video games, breaking the monotony of the urban landscape. In another part of the capital, Imane Droby perches on a stool in front of a school wall, tracing out a realistic portrait of a woman embroidering. The 36-year-old from Casablanca says she, too, fell into painting murals "sort of by accident". "I got a taste for it. It's great to transform a blank wall into a work of art," she said. She added that street art "is difficult for everyone but even more so for women. You have make double the effort to make your mark." It is an art form that has flourished since the early 2000s in Morocco's commercial capital of Casablanca. A decade later in 2013, the Sbagha Bagha festival stirred a new level of public interest in murals. "At first it was really complicated, because unlike graffiti or stenciling, painting murals requires organization," said Salah Malouli, artistic director of Sbagha Bagha and Jidar. "At the time, nobody felt comfortable working in public. There was lots of apprehension." But today both residents and institutions show more interest in murals, Malouli said, and in recent years the artworks have graced walls not just in big cities like tourist hub Marrakesh but also in more remote areas.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/3213996/art-flourishes-walls-morocco