A gift in the form of graffiti

We’ve seen this countless of times, graffiti scribbles on a school wall, buildings, houses and street corners. Many find graffiti bothersome, ugly, disorganized, purely immature and downright disrespectful … But can one really judge the art behind this act of so-called vandalism? Graffiti is an art form that is difficult to decipher and understand but it’s not that complicated as trigonometry, all there is to it is an artistic mirror of the doer’s mindset and need. Graffiti can come in so many forms; all we can say is that it’s street art. Some are grand and combine half a dozen colors with inscriptions yet others can be simple and straight forward. Turki Al-Andas took that straight forward stance in graffiti, he’s a graffiti artist with an intent to beautify his city, Riyadh. Every now and then, you’ll find graffiti in the form of a phrase accompanied by a structure of some sort, that’s Turki’s art.
With 100 graffiti spread all over the city of Riyadh, Turki doesn’t simply choose a random picture or location, the process takes a lot of him. In his own words, there are three phases that he goes through. The thought of a specific graffiti comes along after experiencing something personally, whether it’s a phrase from the Qur’an or Sunnah, a paragraph he read in a book, a picture he’s seen in a magazine or television or a light bulb over the head thought. He chooses the picture that he thinks would go along with a phrase of his choosing that suits the accompanying picture, then comes the hard part, perfecting that image on stencil and making sure that it’s preserved against the environmental effects. The locations can be somewhat random but he smartly chooses an area where his graffiti is needed.
“I love my city, no wait; I feel a passion toward my lovely city of Riyadh. It’s large, modern with beautiful sky scrapers, roads, malls, and structures but if you take a side road into one of the alleyways, that beauty disappears all together. That’s life; it’s not purely beautiful all around. I want to beautify my city; it’s my gift to it. The locations I choose to graffiti are helping bring some joy, wisdom and a sense of art therapy.”
Each stenciled graffiti image speaks a story, each inspired by something the artist felt, as with most artists. But what makes Turki’s graffiti stand out is the simplicity of a picture with an intensity of a phrase. The 21-year-old native of Riyadh includes some mischief and humor in his graffiti like the mouse holding an ax waiting for the cat by the corner, an ode to Tom and Jerry of course. To create a stenciled image, the young artist starts off with doodles and experimenting on a regular piece of paper until he gets the image he wants just right. The next phase is to transfer that image to a much larger hard paper and create the right cutouts as well as the phrase he’ll be using with it. “I’ve never had a strong background in art, but I’ve loved it as a child and now as an adult I went back to finding the method that suited me best. My parents were always an encouragement and so that’s how my trial and error stage never ceased. It’s natural to make mistakes but I’ll keep learning until I get it right. I might not see the flaw in one of my graffiti at first but someone might come and critique it for me and that’s how I learn.”
As for critique and praise, young Turki communicates mainly on his social media pages. Naturally not everyone would understand his way of art and offer different levels of advice and critiques, but many are in agreement that it brings joy to catch a glimpse of his work here and there in the streets of the capital. Many still think that his work isn’t beautifying walls, they believe in the opposite form, that graffiti is merely splashes of incoherent gibberish. Many call forth for the municipality to deal with his graffiti but as he recalls in a number of incidents with the local police and municipality workers, they’ve never stopped him per se. They were inquisitive and curious and after explaining, they would allow him to continue with his work. Al Andas believes they’ve understood his intent and thus allowing him to finish the graffiti he’d be working on.
“I am equally in the same position as the other graffiti artists who chose to write down their numbers or declare their love for person X, it’s the message that is different but graffiti is graffiti.”
Art will always be art, regardless of the misunderstandings, some see the beauty in it, and others don’t. It’s a personal perspective of each individual, but we can all agree that no matter what, there should always be respect toward the artist and his portrayal of it. For more on Turki’s graffiti, follow him on his Instagram and Twitter accounts: Turki_Alandas.
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