Ameila Smith Articles - Art and culture

14/07/15

Spray Painting Philosophy

In downtown Shoreditch, French-Tunisian street artist eL Seed is transforming a dull grey wall into a colourful mural. He has already translated a quote from the English philosopher John Locke into Arabic, sprayed it in the shape of a circle, and is filling the spaces between the letters with pinks, yellows and blues. Locke's quote reads: "It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth." eL Seed says the quote addresses "collective and social responsibility and responsible ways to change minds", which resonates with recent events in Tunisia. The swirling Arabic script is the signature part of his work so it's hard to believe eL Seed only learnt how to read and write classical Arabic around ten years ago: "I had the desire to get back to my roots," he told me over Skype several weeks ago. [ read more ]

19/06/15

‘We are not made of ink’

Elias Khoury has lived through Black September, the Six Day War, the Israeli invasion of 1982 and the Lebanese civil war. More recently a conflict in Syria has been raging across the border from his home in Beirut; it has threatened his country's stability. He says witnessing so many battles can be like living in a history book, though in reality this isn't as glamourous as it sounds. "It's very tough actually. It's more interesting to read books than it is to live in them. You feel you are living inside a book, dealing with the adversity of blood and death, but we are not made of ink, we are made from real material. It's very, very tough but it shows us many things. One of them is the stupidity of human history," he says, pausing for a moment to think. [ read more ]

05/06/15

Emad Burnat, Director of 5 Broken Cameras: "I tell Israeli activists they should work inside Israeli society and not just come to our village."

"Don't worry if you don't have money for the CDs," says Emad Burnat, waving towards a pile of signed copies of 5 Broken Cameras. "It's more important that you show your friends the film so they see what's happening in Palestine." Speaking after a screening organised by the International State Crime Initiative, Burnat's insistence the audience take the film home affirms one of its key aims: exposure to the cause. [ read more ]