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Monday, April 21, 2014

Jeddah Graffiti Series: From 2014 Jeddah Art Week

One of my favorite exhibitions for this year's Jeddah Art Week, which was held in February, was the graffiti street art by several artists that was painted in an urban area in Al Balad, the oldest part of Jeddah.  With crumbling buildings and a mosque minaret in the background, this graffiti really stands out.  Middle Eastern graffiti combines Arabic calligraphy with graffiti, coining the term "calligraffiti."

I have complained before about the non-artistic graffiti that plagues the entire city of Jeddah, but this is real art and I love it. For the next few days I will be featuring more graffiti from Jeddah Art Week.  
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3 comments:

  1. William KendallApril 21, 2014 at 2:49 AM

    It looks like a good area for these graffiti-artists to go to work in.

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  2. Jerry Mc KennaApril 23, 2014 at 7:31 PM

    I have a hard time seeing any good in this kind of stuff, I cannot separate it from the ordinary graffiti one used to see so much in NYC. I was going to college (for a BFA in fine arts) in NYC when graffiti blew up from pen and pencil marks on walls to spray paint. It made a mess of NYC for years. I know this is supposedly different but it shares the same comic book aesthetic. It just looks ugly to me.

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  3. The NautilusApril 11, 2019 at 10:46 AM

    I'm with all artistic forms of self and sociopolitical expression, however, as a Jeddawi my first reaction to this was sadness. Of all the places in jeddah they could've done this why choose al-balad? That place to me is special because of its history and architecture...this type of art is so foreign in that area that it takes away from its own beauty and magic.
    Promote all types of art, just please..respect the soul (and residents) of the locations you're taking the art to.

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