„Calligraphy makes me feel the ancestral“

20.11.2022

Daniel Arab was born in Munich in 1984. At the age of three, he moved with his family to Lebanon. From 2006 he studied at the Technical Academy of Art in Hamburg and Berlin. After graduating in Communication Design in 2010, he founded his own design label Colorblind Patterns. He lives and works in Berlin.

Daniel, your art is called calligraffiti - a portmanteau of calligraphy and graffiti. Which of these two aspects is more important to you?

Difficult question...both are important to me. I started with graffiti and from there I came to calligraphy. But I feel comfortable in both worlds, so calligraffiti is exactly my habitat.

Let's start with Arabic calligraphy and its historical development. Inevitably, you come across the close connection to Islam. Is Arabic writing unthinkable without religion?

Writing already existed among the Arab tribes of the pre-Islamic period. It had no uniform system, did not look particularly beautiful and had many local and regional expressions. This changed with the rise of Islam. The script had to be standardised, as the intention was to write down what God had to say in a way that could be understood by everyone, i.e. ultimately what we call the Koran today. The Islamic ban on images also played a role in the development of calligraphy. Painting an animal or a human being was understood as a creative act. But only God can create something. Our task as human beings is to pass on his message. Writing therefore acquired a dual role - as a medium for religious texts and as a new, legitimate form of artistic expression. To this end, it became increasingly systematised and graphically stylised. Islam has consequently been an essential factor in the development of Arabic writing as we know it today.

This sacredness or holiness, if you want to call it that...do you feel it in the artistic treatment of writing?

I wouldn't call it sacred. I myself am not a Muslim, but a Lebanese Christian, but I am not religious either. What I feel is the ancestral. These forms that have been repeated for so long, that always touch people, striking contrasts, the depth that can be discovered, that's what I find fascinating.

In the development of calligraphy, two styles emerged early on, the angular Kufi and the cursive Naskhi script. What can you say about them?

Kufi is basically the older version. At some point, it was only used in architecture, because it is not very legible, but very decorative. Naskhi is derived from the Arabic word نسخ (naskh), which means "to copy" or "to reproduce". This writing is highly systematised, with fixed sizes and spacing. It is easy to read and is ideal for writing or copying longer texts. Over time, it became the dominant Arabic style of writing. But the Kufi also still exists and is used today as a kind of window, as a creative free space compared to the stricter naskhi.

Which of these two styles is more important for your art?

It is a mixture of both. I don't use a proper Naskhi script, so I automatically feel closer to Kufi. The Naskhi script has a communicative function. My calligraphy has a pictorial, creative purpose. On the other hand, the letters I use for decoration are often visually oriented towards Naskhi. In addition, I use the Latin lettering, which also has an influence.

You studied Communication Design in Germany and you have, besides Arabic, German roots too. Before we talk about that, let's go back to the Arab world and the second aspect of calligraffiti, namely street art and graffiti. You spent your youth in Tripoli, Lebanon. What kind of city is that and what was the scene like there?

The scene is very small. At the beginning of my time in the late 1990s, I was maybe one of five people doing graffiti in the whole of northern Lebanon. Tripoli is a city that has become more and more impoverished over time. There are many problems but also a great openness and tolerance. But my inspiration and my graffiti come from Germany. My father traded in German shoes and went to Frankfurt am Main every now and then. As a child, I accompanied him and saw the graffiti on the way from the airport to the station. That was a key experience for me. I knew it was forbidden and I didn't understand at all how the artists managed to paint these pictures - so big - how could something like that be done illegally? Back in Lebanon, I started doing graffiti myself.

So you were a pioneer and one of the first to practice this culture in Lebanon?

One hundred percent! Unfortunately, there is no proof of that (laughs). I was never seen as a pioneer, but I also left at some point and after that it really took off there. That always annoyed me a bit. Somehow I was too early for Lebanon and too late for Germany, where graffiti was already widespread. In Lebanon people didn't understand what I was doing at first. After I introduced my friends to it, we also painted together. Through hip-hop and MTV, street art gradually became more noticed, but there was no scene in that sense...we were the Atek crew and we were, as far as I can tell, the only ones active at the time. I thought it was a shame that there was so little street art in Beirut then. A city with graffiti has a soul, has people who have something to say. People probably just needed something to discover the strength and power behind graffiti. For me, the fact that a scene exists is a sign: there is life in this city, something is happening here. This super-snazzy image that we know from Switzerland...everything is perfect, but deadly boring! It's the same in design - too perfect, too ready-made, it's not particularly interesting. Graffiti is dirty, it is done by people who want to show that they are there. Graffiti on clean walls to prove that they exist. I think that's good.

Let's talk about your professional developement in Germany. You have a design apprenticeship, you studied Communication Design. How is that compatible with street art? Did your studies broaden your craftsmanship? What did you gain from this for your artistic development?

Graffiti definitely brought me to design. There were many fellow students at university who had a similar path, from graffiti to love of colour and from there to design. I actually wanted to learn drawing there, storyboards. I failed right in the first semester when the teacher in the illustration course said that I had no sense of proportion. That threw me off track quite a bit. In fact, my way of drawing people is rather comic-like. But in the semester after that, I was the best in typography. That was a wake-up call, because for the first time I was better at something than everyone else. Then it became clear to me: you have to become a typographer.

With Colorblind Patterns, your label, you have turned typography into a profession by using it as a basis for fashion design, for example for shoes or bags.

Exactly. I've always had lots of ideas, but it's also clear that pure art is harder to sell than an artistically designed product. Colorblind Patterns was the product behind the idea. You can always use a bag. If the bag also sells my art, it's a double success.

Your design medium, calligraphy, is based on Arabic lettering. Is writing still communication for you? Is the bag also a text?

I used to do it that way. For example, I hid Arabic swear words in my pictures. Nasty slang, which I then squiggled beautifully. I just love contrasts and thought it was great when people said "Oh, what a beautiful picture" and then it said "Deina Mudda" (German slang for "your mother") in Arabic (laughs). But over time I realised that there was a message coming from me and at some point I decided to take a step back and just let the shapes speak for themselves.

How does the process affect you? Are you always clear about what you are doing? Do you know at the beginning where you will end up?

I usually know how I want to start, but often not where the journey is going. As an artist I am very spontaneous. My best paintings are often the ones which I have little time for and where I have done little pre-planning. If my own energy is right, people react positively, even if there are a few mistakes in the execution here and there. If you overdo it with the planning, then the plan becomes visible in the picture. I think it's more exciting for viewers to subconsciously discover their own patterns.

In an article about you that can be read on the internet, the author calls you an "Orient-Futurist". Can you relate to this term?

Yes, yes...I find it exciting and take it as a compliment. "Futurist" is a bit crass but because I always had the feeling that I was a few steps ahead, at least in the Arab world, this term makes sense. I have no problem with religion and am very much in favour of tolerance in all directions, but you can also see where religion holds art back. Some people only perceive calligraphy if there is an interpretation or a religious reference. I find that very conservative. Especially when young people come with such views, I am disappointed. I see a future where Arabic writing can be perceived as beautiful and celebrated - even without content. Perhaps this is my contribution to a futurism of the Orient.

Calligraffiti also has a subversive character, it was used, for example, as a form of political protest in the context of the "Arabellion" that began in Tunisia in 2010. Do you connect with that?

I understand the idea. But for me it's less about politics and more about rebellion in artistic expression. Calligraphy, beautiful writing, is traditionally known on paper, it's about religious texts, accurately executed. Calligraffiti, on the other hand, can be free of content, huge, painted with drops on a wall. In that sense it's a form of rebellion, but I wouldn't say I do it for a political reason.

Is your artistic potential, your capacity for expression, already fully developed? Or is there something you still want to achieve?

Yes, of course there is. I love ornamentation, borders and things like that. I can still learn a lot there. In writing itself, in calligraphy, too. I always say that in my workshops - two hours and you're a calligrapher, that's the wrong message, there's no such thing! Calligraphy is something you will never finish learning, a life task, there is no limit to perfection. Everyone has to decide for themselves how much time and dedication they want to put into it.

Finally, I would like to ask you three quick either/or questions and I am very curious to hear your answers. The first question is: Black and white or colour?

(Thinks for a long time) Only one or the other? Really hard! I would say black and white. If I don't have colour, I'm still happy with it because the maximum contrast between light and dark offers a lot of scope. Black and white are so far apart as poles...there's a lot of space in between and shades of grey. Not using colour is a limitation but limitation also brings creativity.

The second question: pencil or ink?

For the desert island, I would take the pencil. Things I do with ink I can imitate with the pencil but not the other way round.

And the last question: drawing or spraying?

Drawing or spraying? Damn (thinks about it for a long time)...for the joy of life: spraying! You're usually outside, the picture is big, you always have some dirt on your hands. It's just fun!

Interview: Jörg Siegeler