Wie ben ik

As a little child i have always been attracted to the Middle Eastern culture. From calligraphy to the Turkish language (never finished that one because of the Western alphabet) to the Arabic language (still busy with this one). Travelled a lot of times to Turkey, of which my Mardin-Diyarbakir-Syrian border trip was the most impressive. 

I have been to Morocco from the Moroccan/Algerian desert driving all the way up, through all the royal cities and the Atlas Mountains to Tanger, meeting locals, tea houses on the most unexpected places, waterfalls, helpful people, ancient art, mosques, local cultures and especially places that have not been touched for thousands or hundreds of years like the amazing soundless dessert.
So much to see yet, but the older i get the harder it seems to travel to certain Middle Eastern countries.

As i am still busy with the Arabic language (hard one) because i so much love the writing style and the sound vowels, I’ll probably wont give up till i cracked this one.

My predilection for the Arabic language is the mean reason why i have interest in the powerful history of the area. Learning a language is learning to relate to another culture.  And although the polarisation between the Western world and the Middle East hasn’t reach the top yet, i see more and more similarities than differences.

I like to make the similarities between both worlds more visible from my perspective through analog and digital imagery techniques.

During my holiday in Morocco I recognized the Aicha tomato tin cans which reminded me of the Campbell soup can of Andy Warhol and the Dutch Unox brand. It appeared they all were founded around the same era and had their biggest revival at the end of the sixties / beginning of the seventies and were almost identical in design and use of colours, and resulted in my first big project of paper and textile project Unox/Aicha. 

Enjoy life!

سيد سالم