Page 4 - AIT1221_UrbanArtKuenstler

r Jad, can you remember when you started panting and when you invented your
figure Potato Nose?
I have been doodling since childhood, at school and at home. I spaced out every
time I let my pen slalom slowly on the paper, on the wall or class-table. It was my
tool to protect myself as a kid from many out of my control unconformable situations
I faced growing up in Lebanon. Boring classes at school or family quarrels at home,
no situation could get to me once I started drawing my figures in repetitive motions.
Repetition transported me into a safe space where I am in control. the show

r You received a master degree in architecture from the Lebanese University of
Fine Arts. By profession you should design buildings, as a street art and graffiti
artist you work with buildings which have been destroyed by the war or which 11.– 15. 2. 2022
have been abandoned. How did this change of perspective come about? FRANKFURT / MAIN
It was never a decision. It just felt natural to show my drawings and from there
things begin to happen. I started framing the Potato Nose drawings and exhibited
them on street markets, in coffee shops and at university... And the more feedbacks
and discussions the work created the more I wanted to show. This led me to making
building size murals out in the city. My architectural studies helped me to have an
eye for the urban fabric. They helped me to include the selection process of the buil-
dings and surfaces I wanted to paint as part of the artwork. Thus, the abandoned
and war damaged buildings became my focus. I always knew, even while studying
architecture, that I want more from architecture than just having a job serving city
developers’ wishes and capitalism.

r Your projects have much to do with architecture, like the temporary project
Burj el Hawa, The Tower of Wind. It’s at the same a very poetic and politically
inspired art installation. Please explain your idea!
Burj El Murr, The Murr tower, is an accidental monument of horror standing in the
center of Beirut. The construction work started in 1974. It was supposed to be a su-
perstar, the tallest office building in the middle east, representing the growth of Bei-
rut's golden age. Using the latest building technologies back then, the tower was
going up one floor per week. In 1975 the civil war started, halting the construction,
and the tower became a sniper base and torture underground prison. Many militias
took over this strategic high-rise located between West and East Beirut, between the GLOBALLY
Muslim and the Christians sides. Today and after more than 30 years from the end
of the civil war, the tower is empty with 400 black windows. The Lebanese army uses
its first four floors as an army base. It only serves to remind the war generation of
bitter memories. „Burj El Hawa“ , The Tower of the wind, is my installation where I UNITED
used colored curtains to transform that tower of bitterness into a choreographed in-
stallation dancing with the wind, shimmering colors with every wind gust. The cur-
tains I used are normally found on the balconies of poor neighborhoods of Beirut, Erfolg kommt von Zusammenarbeit. Die Ambiente
both in the West and in the East of the town. präsentiert das Panorama des Konsumgütermarkts.
Sie ist der Treffpunkt, der Objektgeschäfte voran-
r Art is a tool for reaching people from different nations. What feedbacks do you
get and what do these awards mean to you? bringt. Partner begegnen sich und profitieren von
Expertise, Innovationsstärke und Trendkompetenz.
At the beginning, most of my projects were self-funded. Then I started to work with
art patrons and galleries who sponsored me. I also started to get commissions from ENDLICH. WIEDER. LIVE.
art centers, from museums and street art festivals. Above all the awards are a strong
motivation to keep doing what I do. Especially the visibility I got from international Neue digitale Features unterstützen
prizes lead to commissions from different places around the world, and of course das Geschäft. Infos und Tickets:
the monetary rewards are partly how I manage to make my living from art. „The
ambiente.messefrankfurt.com/
tower of the wind“-installation got the 1st prize for the urban art section at Arte La-
contractbusiness
guna Prize Venice 2019. I also got invited to reactivate many contemporary ruins
around the world, as well as museums and cultural centers. I consider these projects
as derivables of the Tower of the Wind. In each new place the curtains took a new
shape and a new meaning: In Sicily, at Countless cities biennale in 2019 the curtains
of the Beirut pavilion were shaped as the plastic stripes normally installed on Sici-
lian coffeeshop doors. Also in 2019, at Dunkirk during the Plein vents exhibition in
the Halle Aux Sucres Art center they reminded locals of their historic beach tent pat-
terns. At the National Museum of Beirut they imitated the columns of this local mu-
serum. In Stavanger, in Norway, they reactivated a vacant fish factory. And last year,
in the coastal town of Batroun, in Lebanon, they became beach towels on the aban-
doned aquarium next to the beach.