​Streets of Beirut

That it is coming closer to my home country doesn’t mean people felt completely safe before. Like here in Lebanon, where they had to deal with a long history of war which I see when I walk down the streets. The prevailing atmosphere I experience is that they want to forget what happened and move on to rebuild their beautiful, promising city.

Beside all the construction sites, you see a lot of street art. At first I walked down the streets in Beirut and saw the most beautiful art on high rise buildings and small walls. In the beginning I was just passing those signs of expressions, but walking a lot in the city I started to pay attention and wanted to know more about what was written and painted. You see layers of posters, logo’s, slogans and graffiti on an empty wall. I’m becoming aware of the deeper layers of street art. Under the bright full images, I could see the bullet holes. Lebanese artists developed a way to give color to the city. Beirut is a blank canvas for young people to express themselves and give hope, color and meaning to the people. The walls tell their story. To know more about street art in Beirut I saw an interesting documentary by Al Jazeera World “Walls that speak”. I’m moved by the way the artists express themselves and how they use their environment.

I will mention three beautiful initiatives. The first initiative I want to mention is individual graffiti masterpieces. The Guardian wrote a piece about the graffiti artist Yazan Halwani, how he is inspired to use graffiti with the aim of uniting the different neighborhoods. He grew up after the war, but felt it everywhere in his surroundings. In the urban area and in the people. Beirut was divided in different parts, controlled by the military. With his paintings he wants to express the city in a positive way by speaking with the people in that neighborhood and make a design that fits the area. Read about it here. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/22/beirut-graffiti-artist-yazan-halwani-lebanese
Also interesting: Interview with Yazan Halwani by Al Jazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/qa-calligraphy-meets-street-art-beirut-150616064634855.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wnoAcN2b2o

The second initiative is “The Chain Effect”. As a Dutch girl, one of the first things I noticed were the bicycle graffiti on the walls to promote cycling in the city. Which I definitely support when looking at all the cars in the streets, which cause traffic jams, terrible road safety and high pollution rates. They use nice slogans in their graffiti to inspire people and let them think about the bicycle as sustainable and mobile vehicle. By walking in the streets sweating due to the hot summer in Beirut, I can imagine it will be hard to promote cycling in this hilly city.

Nice quote by the artists:

´A bicycle is revolutionary – it has the power to transform urban landscapes and social frameworks when introduced into daily lives and travel patterns. It is the ultimate symbol of freedom, equality and sustainability in a society.’

The last initiative is “Dihzahyners” who are artists/designers that aim to create initiatives to make Beirut brighter and more beautiful. Their most famous project is ‘Paint- up’ where they painted 73 steps in the neighborhood Mar Mikhael.

The stories moved me and made me even more interested in the stories behind the paintings. In the upcoming weeks I will definitely look for the different masterpieces.