Loading ...Egyptian artist renegotiates identity harmonising calligraffiti, visual art, illustrations
Uninhibited letters dance about the white expanse in utter spontaneity, all the while confining themselves to a circular geometric pattern. Shades of green fuse with blue, maroon and black. Inside this chain, arrays of pistachio green letters wander about freely.
The word “al hob” (love) sits at the inner center in big bold letters, and beneath it flows the rest of poet Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi’s famous line (awalaho hazl, wa akherahou jad), translating into “at first, it is a comical encounter, but it ends in all momentousness.”
This unconventional work of art belongs to calligrapher Mahmoud Atef’s repertoire. Also an established poet, writer, and previously a cultural-development worker, Atef embarks on audacious experimentations with this classical Arabic form.
Yet Atef’s artwork is steeped in contemporariness as he fuses classical calligraphy with modern graffiti art, visual art and illustrations. For the artist, this composite of the old and new has a philosophical underpinning: the notion of Al haweyya (identity) is what he tries to both preserve and renegotiate through his work.
Source: english.ahram.org.eg