With Last Dance of the Dead, Yemeni Artist Paints Message for France
By Reuters
PARIS — Three dangling bodies painted against a blood red background shocked passersby in central Paris on Tuesday after a Yemeni artist unveiled a mural to denounce French arms’ sales to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in his homeland.
The three-metre (10 ft) high mural entitled “Last Dance of the Dead” was created by Murad Subay. He started painting when the conflict in his country broke out in 2014 to raise awareness on arbitrary arrests before taking his brush to the bombed out rubble in the capital Sana’a.
“This is inspired from real stories of people who died in the war and I am trying to convey how war has affected the people,” Subay, who fled to France 18 months ago and is part of the Artist Protection Fund (APF), which provides relief and safe-haven to artists at risk.
France is among the world’s leading arms exporters with its sales to Saudi Arabia last year rising 50% despite the government calling for an end to the conflict in Yemen.
Paris says its arms sales are governed by strict procedures that are in line with international treaties. President Emmanuel Macron claimed for the first time in May he had received guarantees from Saudi and the United Arab Emirates that French weapons were not used against civilians.
“We’re seeing a change in the public language, but what we’ve been asking for over the last two years is an end to arms sales,” Aymeric Elluin, advocacy officer at Amnesty International France, told Reuters.
At least 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen’s civil war and millions displaced, according to the last available figures from the United Nations in 2016. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a database that tracks violence in Yemen, said in October around 100,000 people have died since 2015.
(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
أهدي هذا العمل لكل الأبرياء الذين فقدوا حياتهم ولأسرهم، في هذه الحرب التي اكلت الأخضر واليابس وكل ما استطاع اليمنيين ان يبنوه خلال السبعة العقود الماضية.
جداريتي “رقصة الموتى الأخيرة” والتي نفذتها في منطقة “المارين” وسط مدينة باريس. يرافقها نص باللغة الفرنسية “على أجساد اليمنيين، تمر الحرب، النفاق الدولي وأسلحته”.
ضمن تعاون فني مع الثمان المنظمات الفرنسية الأتية ” أمنستي، اوكسفام، سام اوف اس، اكشن اغينست لفام، كير، أكت، ميديسن دو موند، و كرايزس ان اكشن”.
شكرا لكل من ساهم في إنجاح هذا العمل ولكل الحضور الجميل
From the heart of Paris “The Last Dance of the Dead”
I dedicate this mural to all the innocent people who have lost their lives and to their families, in this war that has destroyed everything Yemenis have been able to build over the past seven decades.
The “Last Dance of the Dead” mural, I installed it on a wall in the Marin district at the centra of Paris. Accompanied by a French text “on the bodies of Yemenis, war, international hypocrisy and its weapons, pass”
It is an artisitc collaboration with the following eight French organizations: Amnesty, Oxfam, Sum of us,
Action Contre La Faim, Care, Act, Medicine du Monde, and Crisis in Action.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of this work and to all the beautiful attendees.
سأنفذ جدارية بمساحة “9 أمتار عرض، و 6 أمتار إرتفاع” يوم الإثنين 18 نوفمبر 2019، على جدار في وسط مدينة باريس في منطقة “المارين”، بالتعاون “إمنستي، اوكسفام، كير، ميديسن دو موند، أكت، اكشن كونترا لفام، سيم اوف از”, يليها مؤتمر صحفي صباح الثلاثاء أمام الجدارية.
On Monday 18 November 2019, I will do a mural on a wall (9mX6m) in “La Marin” area, middle of Paris, in a collaboration with “Amnesty, Oxfam, Care, Medecins Du Monde, Action Contre La Faim, Sum Of Us, and Act”. Follows a journalistic confrence on Tuesday morning in front of the mural.
Světová média ho přezdívají arabský Banksy. Sám ale takové označení nepodporuje. Nemá ani umělecké jméno, chce být zkrátka Murad Subay. Jemenský umělec se začal věnovat streetartu v době arabského jara před osmi lety, od roku 2015 ve své tvorbě zachycuje krvavou válku v zemi. V současnosti je na ročním uměleckém pobytu Artist Protection Fund v jihofrancouzském městě Aix-en-Provence, v rámci něhož chce upozornit na dodávky zbraní do Jemenu, které krvavé boje jen dál prohlubují. “I kdyby válka skončila, zbraně tam budou dál v oběhu desítky let. Světové zbrojařské firmy si z války dělají byznys. Prodávají je jako zboží,” upozorňuje Subay v rozhovoru pro Aktuálně.cz.
Nedávno médii proběhly zprávy, že se koaliční vojska stahují z Jemenu. Blíží se konec války?
Teď se objevují velké titulky, že válka končí, ale i kdyby oficiálně končila, místní boje budou pokračovat desítky let. V Jemenu se hraje nejen o moc v zemi mezi Húsíji a jednotlivými komunitami, ale také o vliv na mezinárodním poli. Naše země nebude nikdy stabilní – už jen kvůli geografické poloze, bohatství, půdě, ropě a tak dále. Na jihozápadě země leží klíčový průliv Bab-al-Mandab, přístav Aden má světový význam.
Svět přesto moc pozornosti současné válce příliš nevěnuje.
Je to obrovské pokrytectví, v Jemenu se bojuje o mezinárodní zájmy, přesto nikdo nechce nazývat humanitární krizi jako globální. Jemenci, kterým se podaří utéct ze země, ani nejsou považováni za uprchlíky. Na hlad a epidemie tam přitom teď umírá obrovský počet lidí. Spousta humanitárních organizací je podplacených, aby o tom nemluvily. Do toho je velmi těžké se do země dostat. Novináři, kterým se to podaří, nemůžou informovat svobodně. Pokud budou na severu, musí psát pro koalici, pokud na jihu, pro milici. V Jemenu teď není žádná svoboda, natož svoboda projevu. A do toho se konflikt svým způsobem spoustě stran hodí, protože vydělávají na dodávkách zbraní.
O kom konkrétně nyní mluvíte?
O všech, žijeme ve světě pokrytců. O koalici Saúdské Arábie, Spojených arabských emirátů, podporované USA, Británií, Evropou i o Rusku, Číně a Íránu. Obě strany konfliktu jsou dvě tváře stejného. Pět let dodávají do Jemenu zbraně, které možná byly původně určeny koalici, ale teď už kolují i v rukách povstalců. A i kdyby válka skončila, zbraně tam budou dál v oběhu desítky let. Světové zbrojařské firmy si z války dělají byznys. Prodávají zbraně jako zboží. A některé zbraně dokonce v Jemenu testují, jako by Jemenci byli nějaké pokusné myši.
I proto jsem se rozhodl upozornit na tento problém ve své současné kampani Faces of War (Tváře války), kdy ve Francii a Londýně navazuji na fresky, které jsem dělal v roce 2017 v přístavu Hudajdá, kde je situace jedna z nejtragičtějších. Lidi hladoví, umírají, jsou týraní, nemocní.
Označení tichá válka tedy pořád platí?
Platí. Světové mocnosti dál v tichosti podporují konflikt dodávkou zbraní. Vláda je slabá a zkorumpovaná. A Húsíjové si můžou dělat, co chtějí, a umlčovat, koho chtějí. Nutí lidi slepě poslouchat.
Jak se teď běžní Jemenci cítí? Mají ještě nějakou naději?
Nemyslí na zítřek. Na budoucnost. Myslí jen na to, jak přežít den. Nemají žádné plány. Žádné sny. Nemají nikoho, kdo by je zastupoval. Taková je válka, dějí se jen hrůzy.
Musíme připomenout kontext. Od roku 2011 probíhala v Jemenu revoluce. Už tehdy to nebylo lehké, spousta lidí byla zavražděna, mizela za neznámých okolností. Jenže lidé byli aktivní, bylo jich hodně a věřili ve svobodu a spravedlnost. Nebáli se a chodili do ulic. Tehdy jsem taky začal dělat první streetartové kampaně. Nebyla to volba jako spíš forma boje. Svolával jsem lidi přes sociální sítě a společně jsme pak na ulicích tvořili. Lidé svobodně vyjadřovali své naděje a sny. A pak přišla dvě pro Jemen tragická data: 21. září 2014, kdy povstalci obsadili města. A pak vojenská intervence a začátek války 26. března 2015.
Bylo to o půlnoci, stěny domu se začaly klepat, hlavním městem San’á otřásaly exploze, moje sestra šíleně řvala. Celá rodina se seběhla do jednoho pokoje, zapnuli jsme televizi a tam bylo: Válka. Totální šok, kdy nemyslíte vůbec na nic. Trvalo mi čtyři dny, než mi to došlo. Pak jsem se rozbrečel, protože mi došlo, že to bez zbraní nepůjde. Jsme mírumilovný národ, ale ve válce vyhrává ten silnější. Trvalo mi další měsíc, než mi došlo, že válka bude trvat roky. A skoro dva měsíce, než jsem začal přemýšlet, co s tím můžu dělat.
Chodil jsem po místech, kde umřeli civilisté. Procházel se v San’á v ruinách domů zničených válkou. Na severu města byl třeba dům, kde při jednom útoku zemřelo 27 lidí najednou, včetně dětí. Když jsem tam přišel, sousedi mi ještě říkali, že našli pod troskami kusy lidských rukou. Domy se staly hroby vlastních obyvatel, ruiny mým plátnem. Věděl jsem, že jim život nezachráním, ale že musím dělat to, co umím – umění. Začal jsem se zajímat o osudy obyčejných lidí, co přišli o život. A začal připomínat jejich životy malbami na ruiny.
Viděl jste jejich těla?
Je zvláštní, že každý reaguje jinak. V mém sousedství často někteří lidé říkali, pojď se podívat. Ale já nechci. Chci si v hlavě i srdci uchovat to, co mám. Dohnalo by mě to dřív nebo později. Určitě bych ten obraz už nikdy nevyhnal z hlavy. Mrtvé jsem neviděl a ani vidět nechci. Ale samozřejmě se k vám dostane spousta videí, fotek, jak někoho zabíjejí, znásilňují, včetně dětí… Na ulici vidíte popravy na šibenici. Dělají to schválně před očima lidí, aby je to vyděsilo, ovlivnilo jejich myšlení. Válka není jen o bojích, hladu nebo nemocích. Nejhorší na ní je, že z lidí dělá bestie. Lidská povaha taková od přírody není, válka ji dokáže úplně znetvořit. Na válce není absolutně nic hezkého.
Jak se vám s tímto východiskem dělá umění, od kterého se určitá forma estetiky očekává?
Ve válce není žádná krása. Je mi jasné, že si moje díla nikdo do obýváku nepověsí, ale je mi to jedno. Většinu svých obrazů dokonce nemám rád. Ale nemůžu mlčet. Snažím se dát stanovisko k tomu, co se děje. Znázornit pravdu, nebo alespoň část. Držet alespoň nějakou linku v té hrůze, která se děje. Něco, na co budeme moc navázat, pokud válka jednou skončí.
Jaké to je, být za takových okolností tady ve Francii, navíc v poklidném a bohatém městě Aix-en-Provence?
Občas je mi smutno. Cítím zvláštní druh viny vůči svým blízkým. Mám pocit, jako bych si tu neměl moc užívat. Jsem v bezpečí, zatímco oni procházejí těžkými chvílemi. Ale nechci si stěžovat. Když si budeme stěžovat, nikam se neposuneme. Jsem tu proto, abych upozornil na to, co se děje. A do Jemenu se chci samozřejmě vrátit.
Má vaše práce větší smysl tam?
Jemenci jsou ve válce sami. Nemají žádné přátele, spojence ani sousedy. Moje tvorba nikoho nevyléčí, ale aspoň snad může někomu přinést trochu světla – pocit, že v tom, co prožívá, není sám.
The Cultural Frontline: Murad Subay: The Walls Remember
Sunday 25 August and Thursday 29 August
11.30am-12.00pm
BBC WORLD SERVICE
When war broke out in Yemen, Murad Subay began painting murals on the shelled and bullet-marked buildings of his home city of Sana’a.
His colourful messages of protest and hope raised awareness of the conflict’s impact on Yemeni civilians. He encouraged passers by to join him as he worked, and together they filled ruined homes with images of peace.
Journalist Sumaya Bakhsh traces Murad’s journey as he leaves Sana’a for Cairo. International travel is rarely simple for citizens of Yemen, and we hear from Murad as he languishes in Egypt, stuck without a visa and unable to create new work. Murad is used to living and working in the toughest of conditions, but this period of inactivity is a new test for the prolific artist.
Eventually Murad receives a visa and arrives in the UK to launch a new campaign. Painting with Murad on the streets of London, Sumaya digs into his process as Murad explains why ultimately he must return to the conflict in Yemen, armed only with his brushes and spray cans.
A SPG Production for the BBC World Service, produced by Robbie MacInnes
FREQUENT VISITORS to the skatepark on London’s South Bank may have noticed two new works of art among the decades-old graffiti. Both spray-painted in black and white, one image depicts a naked and emaciated mother clutching a newborn; another shows a starving boy, his hair on end, listlessly picking at his hands. Entitled “Hollowed Mother” and “Lost Generation” (pictured), the figures are cadaverous and haunting, with dark empty holes where their eyes should be.
Similar works of street art can be found in Hodeida and Sana’a, cities in Yemen: on the wreck of a door, now in a garbage dump, or on the last standing wall of a house reduced to rubble. “Faces of War”, a project by Murad Subay, a Yemeni artist, seeks to draw attention to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Since the outbreak of civil war in 2014 between Houthi rebels, a Shia militia backed by Iran, and government forces, backed by Saudi Arabia, the water, power, health-care and education systems have failed. The country has suffered the worst cholera outbreak in modern history and faces famine. The United Nations estimates that three-quarters of the population of 28m need some sort of assistance.
Mr Subay’s works convey this desperation. “Devoured”, (pictured below) an installation commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, depicts a skeletal, one-armed man with the same cavernous eyes as the mother and boy in South Bank. He sits, cross-legged, biting into himself; a crow perched on one knee pecks at his gaunt thigh. The image calls forth “The vulture and the little girl”, a Pulitzer prizewinning photograph taken by Kevin Carter in 1993, of a starving Sudanese child (actually a boy) and a vulture stalking close by. (The memory haunted Carter, who took his own life the next year.)
17 July 2019 10:10 UTC | Last update: 1 day 10 hours ago
The conflict in Yemen, now in its fifth year, has been called an “invisible” war. The same could also be said of the country’s art scene: ask an art connoisseur or expert in the Middle Eastern market to name a major modern Yemeni artist and you are likely to draw a blank. “Good Yemeni artists are very few and far between,” said one expert, approached for this piece.
‘There’re so many talents but nobody encourages them’
– Khadija al-Salami, Yemeni film-maker
For many in the art world, there are no established 20th-century Yemeni names, no “modern masters” comparable to the Syrian painter Fateh al-Moudarres, or Iraq’s Jewad Selim, whose best works sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction years after their deaths. In contrast, Yemeni artists rarely make an international impact.
The country’s art scene, like its governments, has in part been hampered by continuously changing borders and political instability. As unrest has descended into war during the past decade, so international cultural organisations like the British Council closed down the spaces it offered for art exhibitions.
Only a scattering of homegrown institutions, like the Basement Cultural Foundation in Sanaa, have managed to hold on.
“There’re so many talents but nobody encourages them,” says Khadija al-Salami, the Yemeni film producer, director and a cultural attache at its embassy in Paris. “They are self-generating. There is nothing that really encouraged them, just an internal force that leads them to do what they do.”
In Yemen, she said, art is regarded as “something that’s just wasting your time. It’s: ‘What’s wrong with this guy?”
Artists, art clubs and the USSR
But it is wrong to see modern art in Yemen as without any heritage. The scene had its beginnings in Aden’s painting clubs of the 1930s and 1940s, says Anahi Alviso-Marino, a Paris-based academic and the leading specialist on the subject.
“It’s just not part of the official story of art in the region. This quarter of the world is quite invisible. That doesn’t mean that there are no artists or art practices or art history.”
Alviso-Marino, through her research, has documented how artist associations, societies, studios, and later, private galleries emerged during the later 20th century in Taiz, Sanaa, and Aden.
Yemeni artist Abd Allah Ubayd in Kiev in 1988 as part of a cultural exchange with the USSR (Abd Allah Ubayd/Arabian Humanities)
The painter Hashem Ali, for example, who died in 2009, ran his studio in Taiz during the 1970s and 1980s – the city held an exhibition and auction of his art in May 2019 to buy a home for his family.
During the same time the Association of Young Artists was active in Aden while the military museum in Sanaa housed Peace Guardians, a major painting by Abd al-Jabar Nu’man.
During the 1990s, the Yemeni culture and tourism office published a quarterly arts journal and the University of Hodeidah became the country’s first public university to offer a visual arts degree. Later, the Ministry of Culture set up houses of art to take exhibitions and workshops across the country.
Art in Yemen was also open to overseas influence. Alviso-Marino has uncovered how, during the 1970s and 1980s, a scholarship programme took between 50 and 70 Yemeni painters, sculptors and poster artists to the Soviet Union to study fine arts as part of a Cold War cultural programme. Many spent years in Moscow for their master’s degrees, before returning to the Gulf.
The series Borderland, by Alia Ali, formed part of the exhibition On Echoes Of Invisible Hearts at Station, Beirut in April 2019 (Station)
The constraints and horror of the current war have resulted in a fresh wave of Yemeni artists who tend to be young – typically under 35 – and who are wary of being framed only within the context of the conflict.
They do not work in calligraphy or anything that could conventionally be called Islamic, or Middle Eastern art: instead, they often choose photography, film or new media. Many joined the 2011 protests in Sanaa’s Change Square, but do not want to be only defined as the product of just another war-torn country.
The output of this small but determined group, several of whom live and work overseas, has been celebrated across Europe, including exhibitions in Berlin in 2018 and Beirut earlier this year.
In early July the British Museum in London organised a symposium as part of the Shubbak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture, highlighting the art of four artists (below) of Yemeni origin – a timely barometer of what is happening to the country’s arts.
Visual artist: Salwa Aleryani
They Purchased Light And Smuggled Hope, from the series ‘Where We Were When The Lights Went Out’ by Salwa Aleryani (Salwa Aleryani)
Salwa Aleryani, like millions of Yemenis, has seen the country’s regular power cuts worsen since 2012. Many of her fellow citizens have protested about the outages that can last up to 12 hours, but Aleryani was also inspired to create art. The electricity stopped flowing, she noticed, but the bills did not; nor even the demands for early payment.
For her project Where We Were When The Lights Went Out, she took utility bills and counter-stamped them with poetic lines in Arabic such as “A moment in the dark does not blind us” or “They purchased light and smuggled hope.” As a work of contemporary art, it is witty and bitterly ironic.
She also took a series of photographs, wryly observing how domestic electricity generators have become part of the furniture in local shops.
Letters To The Sun from the Generator series by Salwa Aleryani (Salwa Aleryani)
Aleryani trained in the United States after winning a prestigious Fullbright Scholarship. She has never displayed her electricity project but this year showed other abstract installations in Vienna, as well as at group shows in Istanbul and Berlin, where she is based.
Photography: Rahman Taha
A work from Rahman Taha’s series From Mountains To The Sea, which explores Yemenis’ relationship with the landscape (Rahman Taha)
Rahman Taha, who is based in Sanaa, has had his photography featured in The New Yorker and Forbes. He previously ran an art gallery in the Yemeni capital.
His films include Short Scenes Based On A True Story, an impressionistic view of life in Yemen. “It showed how you can make art in Yemen,” he says. “I tried to make it a commentary.
“I’m trying to understand Yemen the place and the people, and we have too many beautiful things in Yemen, even Yemeni people don’t know about this.”
Rahman Taha has also produced work based on Yemenis watching the World Cup in Sanaa (Rahman Taha)
Recent projects include Mr Ali, which explores Yemen through the eyes of a man of nearly 80, who has spent his life working on coffee plantations; and photographs of Yemenis watching the World Cup in Sanaa.
From Mountains To The Sea, another of Taha’s works, reflects on Yemenis’ relationship with land and sea, including how residents migrate from the villages to the cities to secure well-paid work with militias.
In the coming months, he will be based in Cairo, ahead of an exhibition at the city’s much-respected Townhouse Gallery later this year.
“When you are inside the country, you have your own eyes,” he says of working in Yemen. “But when you move to another place, you change your opinion and think in a different way. This is important. The normal moments in life, it’s important too.”
Visual arts: Ibi Ibrahim
A still from Ibi Ibrahim’s video work Departure with animation by Hosam Omran (Ibi Ibrahim)
Ibi Ibrahim is a visual artist and photographer based in Sanaa, whose wide-ranging work even includes dress design. He is the founder and director of the Romooz Foundation, an NGO which organised the recent exhibitions of contemporary Yemeni work in Berlin and Beirut, as well as more informal presentations in Sanaa.
His exhibitions include artists like Arif al-Nomay, whose project The Corrupted Files consists of digital photographs taken in 2014 at Sanaa’s Summer Festival that were accidentally corrupted by his computer. The 60 images, shown as a grid installation, reveal what the catalogue described as “an ominous and eerie view” of the festival from days past.
File 7987 from Arif al-Nomay’s series Corrupted Files (Arif Al Nomay)
Other work at the exhibitions has included collages, installations, neon art, and documentary photography. Artists in Yemen, Ibrahim says, paused only a few months when the conflict started. “When we realised the war was going to continue, we started making art.”
Street art: Murad Subay
Devoured by Murad Subay on display at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester (IWM)
Murad Subay from Sanaa is a self-taught street artist who is currently on a year-long scholarship in France. Although he is labelled by the media as “Yemen’s Banksy”, his work has yet to sell at Banksy prices.
His first campaign, Colour The Walls Of Your Street, ran for three months in Yemen in 2012. Later that year, he created The Walls Remember their Faces, stencilling hundreds of faces across Sanaa and other cities in memory of the victims of “enforced disappearances”.
A portrait from The Walls Remember Their Faces, Murad Subay’s 2012 series across Sanaa (Murad Subay)
“The people are essential for this art scene, which is street art,” he says. “They were there with support, with participation because the unique thing about the street art in Yemen is that people are not the audience. They are participating by painting, by supporting, even by criticising.”
In the UK, Subay’s work is on display at the skateboard park on London’s South Bank as part of a campaign against the arms trade, and at the Imperial War Museum in Manchester, where Devoured, a grim image of a skeletal figure being pecked by a crow, is part of the exhibition Yemen: Inside A Crisis.
Murad Subay 