Yemen’s forgotten war, which has killed at least 8,600 Yemenis between March 2015 and September 2017, has, unsurprisingly, also taken its toll on the country’s cultural scene. The galleries in the capital Sanaa have either closed or reduced operations. Consequently, Yemeni artists have turned to two new platforms: the streets and the internet.
Yemeni graffiti artists, both men and women, have been turning the city’s walls into rich canvases, coloring the old gray buildings with splashes of color through various street art projects since 2012, often with pedestrians curiously looking on or joining in. One famous snapshot from 2016 shows a soldier picking up a brush to make his own graffiti: four birds, possibly doves, to extend his own message of peace in the warn-torn city.
Unlike the West, where a more rarified view often links art with existentialist suffering, in Yemen, both the subject and backdrop are brutal survival. For
Murad Subay, a young Yemeni who has become the country’s best-known graffiti artist, the goal was to cover bullet holes and the
signs of war with color.
Yemeni artist and researcher Rhman Qaid is a friend and colleague of Subay. He told Al-Monitor that Subay often said he was inspired by past revolutions, and how artists played a role in the fight for freedom and justice. With at least five major street art projects painted across the walls of Sanaa, Subay often lets friends, fellow artists or even passers-by join in to add their own touches. Projects with political undertones have been vandalized, but their vulnerability has not stopped Yemenis from painting the city walls, not only in Sanaa but also the port city of Aden and the highland city of Taiz.
Subay’s aim is to “wake people up,” to offer an alternative to the violence, Qaid told Al-Monitor as he explained how graffiti developed in Yemen.
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