Africa: Society & History - Final Project

// Raquel Sanchis // Djerbahood project Fall 2015 - Final Project African: Society and History Paul Dambowic

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table of contents

Table of Contents Page 03 Djerbahood Project

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Djerbahood Project Photos

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New Proposal Statement Page 24 New Proposal Photos Page 26

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– Sand swirls at my feet, salty air fills each breath a constant reminder of the Mediterranean Sea a few miles away. People walk by on their way to work or the local hanut for groceries. Kids play soccer in the streets. The houses are dusty and grey, worn down by age. I round the corner and stop in my tracks. Vivid color leaps off the walls in sharp contrast to the dullness behind me. The sudden splash of paint reminds me why I’m in this ancient village.

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Welcome to Djerbahood…

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In June 2014, 150 artists from over 30 different countries painted over the village. Colorful murals, painted messages and vivid portraits now adorn the walls, sidewalks and domes. Mehdi Ben Cheikh, the director of Galerie Itinerrance in Paris, envisioned a sort of open-air museum, one that would give residents world-class art as well as bring tourists and greater prosperity to the village. In September, “Djerbahood” was born.

The place has been transformed. Arabic calligraphy runs along walls. Fanciful personalities have been spray-painted on doors and next to windows. A massive octopus with a dome for a head guards a street corner. There’s no sequence or map to follow; wandering is the order of the day. It gives one a sense of discovery -like you’ve found a secret treasure- when you stumble on the art tucked away in an alcove or narrow alleyway.

Organizers had to obtain permission from both the mayor and individual homeowners to paint, and it wasn’t easy. People were skeptical.

Graffiti is considered vandalism by many Tunisians, and only after the revolution of 2011 have attitudes towards its role in public spaces started to change. With that in mind, artists were asked to be respectful of residents, even getting their input on some of the projects.

Nilko White, a French graffiti artist, said he made an effort to emphasize the existing beauty of the village. “When I’m painting in Berlin or LA or Paris, I adapt and use backgrounds from the local area. So for Tunisia I painted the typical white walls and blue doors, yellow taxis and turquoise sea. I even painted a local truck model that’s really popular here. People really liked that.”

The resulting artwork and growth in tourism have helped the skepticism melt away. Though locals first seem amused I want to photograph them with graffiti, many soon point me to their favorite pieces. The new gallery, it seems, captivates nearly all who wander it.

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“It’s true that life has changed here, the village has changed and it’s a good thing,” says an elderly villager resting in the shadows of a weathered turquoise doorway. “We prefer that our country evolves, it’s better for us. I am for the change; the evolution. And I hope it will continue.”

Since June, he’s been orchestrating the incredible transformation of Er-Riadh, welcoming his hand-picked street artists from more than thirty countries across the world to adorn the walls of this village with their work.

But of course Mehdi and the 150 street artists didn’t just descend upon this remote community with their cans of paint and begin painting whichever crumbling old façade that they felt like. Before anything, the Tunisian Ministry of Tourism had to authorize the project.

Djerbahood also needed funding, which was raised with several commercial sponsors in France and Tunisia.

Next, the major of Djerba had to give his approval for the artists to paint on public property. Some of the art works were done on the walls of cemeteries, schools and even the village’s town hall. Lastly, the Djerbahood project made sure to get the blessings from every homeowner in the village. Only then could the art begin the evolution of this unlikely canvas.

Artists came in shifts throughout the summer, residing in the village while they finished their work. Residents who have lived on the island their whole lives have spent their summer speaking with street artists from opposite continents, learning about each other’s cultures.

The last group of artists has left Er-Riadh but they certainly aren’t the last visitors this ancient village will be seeing. The villagers of Er-Riadh are proud and eager to welcome the new visitors that will come from all over the world to discover their revamped street-art ‘hood’.

“When I saw the images on the internet, I thought it was great,” another villager tells the camera that documented the Djerbahood project. “Tunisians love culture, we’re a cultured people … It will help tell people about our village.”

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance

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Proposal

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– What if African artist use the world as their canvas...

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Floris van Zyl in LONDON

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Floris van Zyl is a Contemporary South African fine artist based in the Midlands of Kwazulu Natal, South Africa.

His subject is rendered in blocks and dabs of colour often built up layer upon layer achieving his intention of, “creating images that work at a distance but become even more rewarding at close range.” He explores these combinations of natural and man-made shapes in his portraits and figure studies where the human form is sometimes set against rigid formal structured shapes.

Before making a mark on the canvas Floris determines what he calls the subject’s emotional climate.

“It is more a feeling than anything else.” Next he considers the technical aspects of the subject, such as its shape, textures and colours. I decide how I can use these to promote the feeling I want to achieve.”

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Julie Mehretu, b.1970, Untitled 1 in TOKYO

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Julie Mehretu‘s large paintings draw on elements of aerial mapping and architecture. With an underlying calligraphic complexity, Mehretu’s energetic art pieces represent accelerated urban growth, and densely populated city environments and social networks of the 21st century. Mehretu creates each painting by adding consecutive thin layers of acrylic paint on canvas and then finishing it off with delicate superimposed marks and patterns using pencil, pen, ink and streams of paint. Mehretu’s work portrays a compression of time, space and place, independent of historical significance. From constructivism and geometric abstraction to futurism, Mehretu describes her paintings as ‘story maps of no location’ envisioning her work as imagined and abstract rather than realistic.

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Cecil Skotnes in PARIS

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Cecil Skotnes was a prominent South African artist. He was born in East London in 1926, studied drawing in Florence, Italy, the Witwatersrand Technical Art School and then the University of the Witwatersrand.

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Ryan Hewett in NEW YORK

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Ryan Hewett’s debut solo exhibition was presented by Barnard Gallery in April 2013 and sold out within days of it opening to the public; his second solo show followed suite with similar success in 2014. After solo presentations in New York and California the artist held his first one-man show in London in April 2015; the exhibition was a resounding success and the demand for his portraits continues to grow.

This recent body of work focused on the depiction of leading figures from the past and present that have, for better or worse shaped the world in which we live. His portraits are not life-like depictions, but rather abstracted representations of his subjects.

According to writer, curator and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith, Hewett’s pictures “appear on the painted surface in the form of extraordinary apparitions, present yet not present. The vigorous marks of the brush reveal them, yet at the same time conceal them”.

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Irma Stern was born in 1894 to German Jewish parents at Schweizer-Reneke, in the North West Province of South Africa. During the Boer War her father, and two brothers were imprisoned because of their pro Boer sympathies. Irma and her young brother, were taken by their mother, to Cape Town.

Her African heritage became important to her and through her later travels she explored her personal myth of exotic Africa as ‘Paradise’. The exotic other was an important feature in her work. Irma Stern travelled extensively in Europe and explored Southern Africa, Zanzibar and the Congo. These trips provided a wide range of subject matter for her paintings and she collected artifacts that featured in some of her Still Life paintings. These African and Medieval artefacts could have represented to her, as it did to European collectors, the idea of Otherness, the exotic.

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Irma Stern in MADRID

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Photography by Galerie Itinerance