Jidar reenchants the walls of Rabat

TWELVE national and international artists from seven countries, nine monumental frescoes, a collective wall, a screen-printing workshop, and an artistic performance are part of the seventh edition of the “Jidar, Rabat Street Art Festival” which is back in force from July 21 to July 31, 2022. The capital city once again becomes, for about ten days, an open-air place of creation with artists from Morocco, Senegal, Spain, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Canada, and Japan. This is an opportunity to build bridges between urban space and artistic practices through in situ works, intended for the general public and the inhabitants of the neighborhoods that host them in particular. As usual, the festival invites a host of young talents to learn about murals and contribute to Jidar’s usual “Collective Wall” . On the other side, artists Ed Oner, Reda Boudina, Tima, Beaugraff, Manolo Mesa, Juraj Ďuriš, Pantonio, Bryan Beyung and Twoone, will compete in terms of audacity to take us on a journey through different lands and different expressions and through a dozen cleverly scattered facades in the city. These works will complete the mosaic of frescoes of prestigious artists, which have adorned the capital since 2015, when the EAC-L’boulvard  association started this venture. As a reminder, the association is also in charge of the other street-art event in the country, the Sbagha Bagha festival in Casablanca. Since then, the Jidar festival has continued to mature and improve. The cosmopolitan capital has welcomed nearly a hundred artists who, with distinct backgrounds, have striven to transpose their imagination onto the walls of the capital. Within seven years, around sixty city walls have been transformed, to such an extent that this festival quickly established itself as one of the unmissable events of its kind on a global scale, while making Rabat a laboratory of international urban art. In 2017, Morocco was referenced by the very specialized site Artsy, which lists the world capitals of urban art.

Bryan Beyung (Canada)
Born in Montreal to a Sino-Cambodian family, Bryan develops an intuitive pictorial approach where raw lines, solid colors and realistic shapes are deconstructed to give a second approach to an image, an idea, or a memory. In his unstructured and dynamic pieces, the freedom of gesture meets the precision of technique. Also, the strength of his works is part of a constant duality between figuration and abstract art, colorful explosions and sobriety, formal art and graphic design.

Juraj Duris (Czech Republic)

Born in 1992 in Nitra, Slovakia, this graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno devotes himself not only to painting but also to experimenting with objects and street-art.  He produces realistic portraits, if not mature and thoughtful works, on the edge of abstraction. His clear and expressive brushstrokes or his subtle color modeling allow him to get to the bottom of things. Ďuriš immerses himself in the pop-art heritage with a view to showing fantastic universes with compositions in  colors that are bright, clean, and full of life. Such an energetic style!

Beaugraff
Born in 1987 in Guédiawaye in the suburbs of Dakar, Senegal, Beaugraff, whose real name is Birame Mbaye, discovered the world of graffiti in 2008 thanks to his love for painting and art in general. This meeting allowed him to freely express in drawing his artistic desires. Strongly influenced by hip-hop culture, his works testify to this universe. During the coronavirus pandemic, Beaugraff became involved with the Radikl Bomb Shot (RBS: grouping of artists who are very active in the promotion and enhancement of graffiti as a form of artistic expression) in the fight against the spread of the virus in Senegal through preventive graffiti. 

Amine BOUSHABA