By: Tamsyn Burgmann, The Canadian Press
Visual artist Jad El Khoury, 27, planned five months to make his "art attack" on this derelict apartment building in downtown Beirut. In this composite image, the photo on the left show the apartment building as it stands in Beirut, and the right is a computer-generated artist’s concept of what his "Potato Nose" characters in his signature humourous style would look like adorned on the same building. El Khoury incorporated missile and bullet holes blasted into the 11-storey facade during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war. He hopes the giant display will unite the religiously divided society with a shared laugh. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Jad El Khoury
BEIRUT – We’re driving the highway through downtown Beirut, just a stone’s throw from the former "Green Line" that split the Middle East capital in two during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war and, with it, its people.
One hand on the wheel, visual artist Jad El Khoury gestures at a bombed-out 11-storey building somehow still planted on its foundation. A constellation of missile and bullet holes mar its exterior.
El Khoury has big plans for this urban eyesore. They’re also illegal.
The 27-year-old has spent five months plotting to scale the derelict apartments and subversively spray upon it a sky-high mural, transforming scars of war into one giant joke.
One crater may become a rabbit’s mouth, smaller cavities the eyes of a fish. The cartoonish "Potato Nose" characters will be painted with simple black lines in El Khoury’s signature style.
He’s dubbed the mission an "art attack."
"The people who shot missiles into these facades didn’t ask permission because it was war time," he says as justification for snubbing formal approval too.
"Now the war is finished, so I feel I have to attack it in a peaceful way."
El Khoury, 27, was born in the town of Baabda and attended the Lebanese University Faculty of Fine Arts.
He was three when the civil war ended but grew up surrounded by its traumatic stories, gutted buildings and a society still very much divided. The country remains segregated by religion, with most towns and regions defined as mainly Christian, Druze or Shiite or Sunni Muslim.
Citizens cluster on Muslim or Christian lines even in its most cosmopolitan hub, Beirut, decades later.
Daily living is also festooned with crises, from pollution and child poverty to violence in Palestinian camps, suicide bombings and political assassinations, wars with Israel and the recent influx of Syrian refugees.
For a long time El Khoury just wanted to escape. But his attitude shifted under the tutelage of another Lebanese artist who became world famous from the inside, Nadim Karam.
All the chaos El Khoury longed to flee could instead be translated into art, Karam suggested to him.
"If you want to start thinking about how to organize the country, how to make it a better place, you don’t know where to start," El Khoury says.
"So I started looking where I can make a small change, so maybe it inspires the people around me."
He realized his own brand of humorous doodling might provide one antidote — uniting people of all beliefs with a shared laugh.
"Have you seen how the people drive? It’s crazy. We’re really stressed from all the things that have happened," he says.
"So we need something, even for a second, to make us get a sense of humour or be happy. That’s how we survive it. That’s how we can live with it. By making fun of it."
So he purchased about US$1,000 in materials, US$2,000 in ropes and harness, and practised drawing while surreptitiously zigzagging down the side of a test building.
In the dark hours of Aug. 16, he descended his chosen structure with paint bucket at side and delivered his punch line. Snaggle-toothed aliens and bug-eyed animals revel in the piece de resistance viewable from a kilometre away. The work is entitled "War Peace."
The triumph has reloaded El Khoury for possible future art attacks, but like many comedians he’s still battling deep-seated internal conflict.
On the same day he points out his barren future canvas, in late July while still in prep mode, we wind a narrow road into the cedar-treed Chouf Mountains, southeast of Beirut.
Outside a cliff-hugging villa, El Khoury brandishes a rifle, firing single blasts into a large square sheet of metal. When the silver splays, it mimics the war traces that have marked him as much as his society.
After silently sketching a crowd of Potato Nose creatures on the separate installation, he confesses his own part in his country’s struggle. As a Christian, he fears he’ll never make genuine friends with Shiite Muslims.
"There is some kind of racism in me that I have because of this damage caused by the war," he says. "I wish I could overcome it. But the place and the surroundings where I grew up made this bad feeling in me very strong."
His communal artwork can provide hilarious distraction, "but it won’t heal the main problem."
"If we keep this racism in us, things will never be peaceful in this country. I dream I can say, ‘I’m Lebanese’ instead of saying ‘I’m Christian,’" he murmurs.
"There’s not too much things that are joining all the Lebanese together. So maybe if a joke can join us, I think this is really an achievement."
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If You Go…
Beirut is a long but easy-to-book flight from major Canadian cities, although the federal government warns against "non-essential" travel to Lebanon due to an unpredictable security situation. Canadian citizens can obtain a free one-month visa upon arrival. Entry will be refused to passport holders with an Israel stamp.
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