Earlier this spring, we were taken with the work of Lebanese artist Jad El Khoury, who completed his both ideologically and technically amazing street art installation, Burj El Hawa, otherwise known as the Tower of Wind. Nuart Festival Founder and Director Martyn Reed called this feat “a standout work leagues ahead of anything else,” and the festival subsequently named El Khoury their artist in residence.
El Khoury also received the Arte Laguna Prize for this work, which focuses on the healing of Beirut after Lebanon’s ravaging civil war. The awarding organization’s site explains that the 31 year old Lebanese native holds a “main intent is to bring attention to social and political issues through public art installations. He is best known for his fictional characters, defined Potato Nose, who draws on the damaged buildings of Beirut, highlighting the bullet holes left by the passage of the civil war.”
Burj El Hawa inhabited the decaying shell of a skyscraper that still stands in the city as a symbol of its tumultuous past. Many such buildings still dot the nation. El Khoury transformed this highly visible wound into a flowing Tower Of Wind by surreptitiously and illegally installing beautiful colored curtains in each of the its many vacant windows. The result was a living, breathing work of art that interacted with the elements to the surprise and delight of Beirut’s inhabitants.
As the festival’s artist in residence, El Khoury participated in September’s annual edition of Nuart, hosted in Stavanger, Norway. For his contribution, he repurposed the fabric from Burj El Hawa, which was only able to remain for a limited amount of time, installing his curtains in a new home.
The work’s new residence in Norway adopted decidedly different dimensions from their original home in Beirut. This abandoned Stavanger building expands horizontally, rather than vertically, standing only three stories high. However, the strips of fabric seem to run and fall vertically, rather than horizontally as they did in Beirut. This inversion creates in a completely fresh visual effect, using the same materials. However, their emotional impact remains strong. In discussing his work in Stavanger, the artist said that he is trying to spread the work’s impact to as many corners of the world as he can. With their reach comes a message of healing, as told by the simple, whimsical pleasure of colorful curtains flowing in the wind.
Nuart Festival exists on the cutting edge of events in its realm. The festival states that it “is a not for profit organization run by a small group of idealistic volunteers, vandals and bored arts professionals.” In seeking to redefine our concept of an arts festival, it “aims to explore and present new movements and works with artists operating across the spectrum of ‘Street Art’. Street art has its roots in situationism, graffiti, post-graffiti, muralism, comic culture, stencil art and activism amongst many other things. It is without a doubt the most exciting development in visual art for decades. A ‘movement’ that has caught the imagination of the general public, collectors, auction houses and curators the world over.” El Khoury’s work is an amazing embodiment of this revolutionary form’s evolution. Street art can be greater than murals, it is any artistic intervention that takes place in public and espouses a meaning greater than that which we often encounter in our rather mundane day to day experiences. Street art can be anything that disrupts routine with beauty, or wounds with healing.
Jad El Khoury: facebook | instagram
Nuart Festival: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter
