art

Pakistan’s missionary trucks

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:41:44 +0100

Traditional Pakistani trucks. Photo: Jamal J. Elias.

Veritable works of art patrol the roads around Peshawar and Rawalpindi. The colourful, hand-painted trucks are a source of pride in Pakistan. But for the last few years, the designs have been hijacked by religious groups trying to spread their beliefs.

Decorated bonnet. Photo: Jamal J. Elias.

Spray cans in Tehran – risky but increasingly popular

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:03:41 +0100

The most famous piece of Iranian graffiti is probably the deathly Statue of Liberty painted on the wall of the former US Embassy in Tehran. There's far more to street art than anti-American paintings however, and in the past two years, it's become more popular than ever.

Here are a few examples, sent to us by one of our Observers in Tehran, Alireza.

War drawn by those who wage it

Julien — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:56:39 +0100

At first sight they seem to be children's drawings of jungles, mountains and rivers. But on closer inspection the details come into focus: people pleading for mercy before being executed, women being raped, hostages tied up, giant cemeteries...

Former Colombian combatants have painted some 90 canvasses as part of an exhibition called "The war we have not seen", currently on display in Bogota's Modern Art Museum. The large-format paintings were made by former members of the guerrilla, the paramilitary and the national army. The 35 men and women - who have deserted, demobilized or been wounded in combat - took up artist Juan Manuel Echavarría's invitation to capture their wartime experiences with paint and brushes.

Photo: Ernesto Monsalve Pino / Bogota Museum of Modern Art

Is snorting coke an art form?

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:06:07 +0100

Renowned Cuban artist Tania Bruguera surprised a Bogota audience in September when she lined up three people directly involved in the Colombian conflict for a chat. The real performance however, started when a waitress emerged with a tray of neatly organised lines of cocaine, and began offering them to members of the audience.

The guests on stage are a former guerrilla, a former paramilitary, and a victim of displacement.

Extract of a video posted on YouTube by "jepenuala".

Stop decorating the “wall of shame”

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:01:19 +0200

Graffiti by Suleiman Mansour. Photo by William J.Schleich, posted here.

Better to employ an enormous grey wall for artistic purposes than leave it a towering eyesore? Palestinians and foreigners alike have been painting the Israeli government's separation wall since construction began. But on both the Israeli and the Palestinian sides of what has been dubbed "the wall of shame", there are those who don't want it to be coloured in, and for very different reasons.

Israel began building the snaking wall which separates the West Bank from neighbouring Jewish settlements in 2002. Its alleged purpose is to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from accessing Israeli territory and then blowing themselves up. But despite the outright condemnation of the project from the UN in October 2003, since then, the wall has only got longer.

When slogans and stencils began to appear on the wall, the initial reaction from Israeli soldiers was to arrest the offending artists. Their excuse? Security measures. Barbed wire, sensors and CCTV were put in place to deter them. But to no avail. Much of the graffiti is found on the sections which cross Bethlehem, Qalqilya, and Qalandiya (a village 11km south of Ramallah), but also on parts opposite the University of Jerusalem, which managed, after negotiations, to save a piece of its campus from being built upon by this controversial structure.

Democracy's first 'disappeared' dots walls of Buenos Aires

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:44:20 +0200

Image: Alejandro Rodriguez on Flickr.

Julio López disappeared on his way to one of the final hearings in the trial of the man who ordered his detention and torture during Argentina's brutal military regime. Three years later, and the 80-year-old bricklayer is still missing, for the second time. He has not been forgotten however; his face can be seen all over Buenos Aires, in stickers, paintings, and stencils.

López is now known as the first ‘desaparecido' to have disappeared after the return of democracy. His plight has made him a symbol of the struggle for justice following the mass human rights violation committed by the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. Some 30,000 people ‘disappeared' in Argentina during those seven years.

López's story began in 1976, when he was kidnapped - for the first time - by national security forces and detained for almost three years. Former police commissioner Miguel Etchecolatz, the officer under whose supervision López was tortured, was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment in 1986 after the return of democracy. But the sentence was annulled on account of the controversial ‘Law of Due Obedience', which allowed officers to claim that they had acted under order from their superiors.

After the law was repealed in 2003 by then president Néstor Kirchner, Etchecolatz was the first soldier to be brought back to court. López testified as a witness. The court ruled the former police commissioner guilty of playing a role in the disappearance of six people and the torture of several others, and sentenced him to life in prison.

But just one day before the verdict, López had disappeared.

Pasting a sticker in the capital. Image: "la renate" on Flickr.

All eyes on the Khodorkovsky trial

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:15:02 +0200

This is an artist's impression of the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Once Russia's richest man and a potential opponent of then president Vladimir Putin, his imprisonment six years ago could now be extended until well after 2035. To publicise the event, almost 40 Russian artists filed into court to compete in illustrating the case.

Before his arrest, Khodorkovsky was potentially Putin's most powerful challenger. At the head of Russia's biggest oil producer Yukos, his influence was impressive. But when the Kremlin produced evidence of fraud and tax evasion in 2003, the oligarch was immediately detained, sentenced two years later, and in 2006, his company declared bankrupt. In March 2007 a second trial against him began after the Kremlin claimed to have found new evidence, this time proving embezzlement and money laundering. Originally it was thought he would be released in 2011. This new trial however, could see him sentenced to 27 more years in prison.

The case is a highly controversial subject in Russia, labelled by Khodorkovsky himself as absurd, and believed by 60 percent of Russians to be controlled by the "highest Russian authorities" rather than the court. Considered a good example of the "displaced" duties of the modern Russian court, a group of human rights activists from the Andrey Sakharov Museum teamed up with the Sergey Kuznetsov Content Group in inviting artists to draw the proceedings and submit their entries to an online competition. The results will be announced tomorrow (September 15).

Living on the edge in Sao Paulo

Julien — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:49:40 +0200

Photo posted on Flickr by Choque.

Brazilian media can’t decide whether these graffiti are the work of artists or of delinquents. But for their authors, “pichaçao” is all about living dangerously.

Pichador comes from the Portuguese verb pichar, which means to apply “piche” (tar), but also to criticise harshly. Most pichadores come from the poor favelas of Sao Paulo. They paint characters from the runic alphabet (a writing system of uncertain origin used by Germanic peoples of northern Europe from about the 3rd century to the 17th century, exclusively in black), and their purpose is to challenge Brazilian society.

Pichadores tend to strike in the early hours of the morning. Armed with paint sprays, they strive to leave their mark as high as possible on the façades of houses, buildings or any urban structure. The less accessible a pichaçao is, the more it is valued. Pichadores say the reason they risk their lives is to rattle a society that treats them as outcasts. But for Brazil’s popular and conservative channel TV Globo, they are little more than vandals.

Posted on YouTube by CriptaDjan.

Prison in Iran through the eyes of a young painter on death row

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 08 May 2009 11:37:03 +0200

These are the works of a young Iranian woman, convicted of murder at the age of 17, who spent her days on death row painting. Christened "The prisoner of colours", Delara Darabi, who protested her innocence after she was sentenced, was hanged in Rasht prison last Friday.

Darabi spent almost six years in prison after she originally confessed to murdering her father's wealthy cousin in 2003. She later said she had been persuaded to plead guilty by her older boyfriend, Amar Hossein, aged 19 at the time. As the minor of the pair, it was thought Darabi would escape a death sentence. But while the boy received a ten-year jail term as an accomplice to murder, Darabi was sentenced to death.

Darabi's family and friends fought hard to prevent her execution. Her plight attracted the attention of international human rights activists, but to no avail.

Chinese Web fuming over auctioned bronzes

Julien — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:43:57 +0100

Chinese bloggers have been locked in a bitter dispute over the sale of two bronze relics stolen a century ago by French soldiers. The bronzes fetched €15.7 million each at this week's Yves Saint Laurent auction in Paris. While some demand their immediate return, others recognise relics were better preserved in France.

Chinese authorities had warned Christie’s against auctioning the rat and rabbit heads that were carried away by French soldiers following the plunder of Beijing’s Summer Palace in 1860. But the auction house went ahead and the two bronzes were sold for 15.7 million euros each. As with the threats of a boycott of the Beijing Olympics, or when US President Nicolas Sarkozy announced he would meet with the Dalai Lama, the auction ignited furious protests and a fair share of French-bashing. Yet, not all Chinese Web users point an accusing finger at France. Some acknowledge that if the relics had remained in China they would probably have vanished at the time of the Cultural Revolution.

This story was reported by Huang, one of our Observers in China.