Name: 【TED】Street Art for Hope and Peace | eL Seed | TED Talks
Uploaded: 2015-10-14T01:20:11.000Z
Duration: 5 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In 2012, when I painted the minaret of Jara Mosque

in my hometown of Gabés, in the south of Tunisia,

Adverbs of degree

I never thought that graffiti would bring so much attention to a city.

At the beginning, I was just looking for a wall in my hometown,

and it happened that the minaret was built in '94.

And for 18 years, those 57 meters of concrete stayed grey.

When I met the imam for the first time, and I told him what I wanted to do,

he was like, "Thank God you finally came,"

and he told me that for years he was waiting for somebody

The most amazing thing about this imam is that he didn't ask me anything --

neither a sketch, or what I was going to write.

In every work that I create, I write messages

with my style of calligraffiti -- a mix of calligraphy and graffiti.

For the minaret, I thought that the most relevant message

to be put on a mosque should come from the Quran,

"Oh humankind, we have created you from a male and a female,

and made you people and tribe, so you may know each other."

It was a universal call for peace, tolerance, and acceptance

coming from the side that we don't usually portray in a good way in the media.

I was amazed to see how the local community reacted to the painting,

and how it made them proud to see the minaret getting so much attention

from international press all around the world.

For the imam, it was not just the painting;

He hoped that this minaret would become a monument for the city,

and attract people to this forgotten place of Tunisia.

the political context of Tunisia at this time,

and the fact that I was writing Quran in a graffiti way

Writing messages is the essence of my artwork.

What is funny, actually, is that even Arabic-speaking people

really need to focus a lot to decipher what I'm writing.

You don't need to know the meaning to feel the piece.

I think that Arabic script touches your soul before it reaches your eyes.

There is a beauty in it that you don't need to translate.

Arabic script speaks to anyone, I believe;

that are relevant to the place where I'm painting,

but messages that have a universal dimension,

so anybody around the world can connect to it.

I was born and raised in France, in Paris,

and I started learning how to write and read Arabic when I was 18.

One of the reasons this is so important to me,

is because of all the reaction that I've experienced all around the world.

In Rio de Janeiro, I translated this Portuguese poem

who was giving an homage to the poor people of the favela,

The local community were really intrigued by what I was doing,

but as soon as I gave them the meaning of the calligraphy,

they thanked me, as they felt connected to the piece.

offered me the only concrete wall of the slum.

which means, "It seems impossible until it's done."

Then this guy came to me and said, "Man, why you don't write in English?"

and I replied to him, "I would consider your concern legit if you asked me

And when he saw I was painting in Arabic,

he got so mad -- actually, hysterical -- and he asked for the wall to be erased.

But a week later, the organizer of the event asked me to come back,

and he told me that there was a wall right in front of this guy's house.

At the beginning, I was going to write, "[In Arabic],"

I decided to be smarter and I wrote, "[In Arabic],"

and I'm trying to be an ambassador of it through my artwork.

And I hope that I can break the stereotypes we all know,

Today, I don't write the translation of the message anymore on the wall.

I don't want the poetry of the calligraphy to be broken,

as it's art and you can appreciate it without knowing the meaning,

as you can enjoy any music from other countries.

Some people see that as a rejection or a closed door,

to my language, to my culture, and to my art.