Shadi Alzaqzouq is a Palestinian artist from Gaza, born in Benghazi (Libya) and residing in Paris since 2005. His paintings have always been intensely connected to his sociopolitical environment. While his work once vented his frustration at being one of many stateless and immobilized artists of Gaza, he now comments caustically on the clash of cultures he experiences around himself in Paris.
During the Arab Spring he started imagining what such a movement could look like in Paris and its suburbs, and putting this into large-scale paintings. This series, ‘National Clothesline’, unchained a controversy, evidence of the fierceness of the cultural conflict unleashed when the concept ‘Islam’ comes anywhere near ‘politics’, leading to panicky, self-interested reactions by Western power brokers. But truly, the incredible complexities of the identities he reveals, of himself, his close of kin, and his neighbors, are disorienting. In seeming complete contradiction, such identities combine radical contestation with deep religious feeling, and crass French popular culture with global Arab revolutionary elan.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
As the painting titled ‘Me in 30 years’ intimates, one thing is certain: the cultural clash is far from over, and there’s a chance it may spread to ever larger communities.
Clik here to view.
Helene Mohammed 2, 70 x 70 cm, 2014
Visit the artist’s website here.
