By Georgios Kassapoglou
The
artwork that I chose to create is on a news article I read last year on the
newspaper. The artwork I was influenced by was graffiti on a wall in Paris. The
graffiti spells out “Coexist”, using an Islamic Crescent as the letter “C”, a
Jewish Star of David as the letter “X” and a Christian cross as the letter “T”.
In my artwork, I want to draw the Holy Kaaba as the representation of Islam,
and the message “Coexist” above it. Around the Kaaba will be surrounded by
golden colors drawn on an A3 sky blue cardboard. I believe this artwork shows
the relation between Islam and Peace.
Unfortunately,
in today’s world, people are easily influenced by the media. People easily
believe what is being said on television and what is being written on the
newspapers and formulate an opinion without bothering to look at the real
facts. This is dangerous as the media is controlled by the people who profit
from war and therefore that news headlines are filled with lies that incite
hate and violence. Mostly, this hate is directed towards a certain group of
people. Before World War 2, when media was first used as a tool to spread lies
and propaganda, the hate and violence was directed by Adolf Hitler towards the
Jews. This lead people to create a negative attitude towards the them and
millions of Jews were massacred. Today, the hate is directed by the Western
media towards the Muslim people but new tactics are being used. Organisations
such as the Taliban and ISIS are created and funded by the West. This tactic
has caused almost the entire world to believe that the Holy Qur'an preaches
violence and that the 1.2 billion Muslims around the world are actually
terrorists. The reason I am enjoying creating this artwork is because I believe
that this terrorist stereotype must be eliminated as the Holy Qur'an actually
preaches more peace than any other religion in the world. And this is obvious
especially since Muslims greet others by saying “Al salam alaykom” which means,
peace be upon you. Some people may think that the opinions of others do not
matter but in this case, it really does. Hundreds of thousands of innocent
Muslims are being killed everyday under the airstrikes that are meant to
eradicate the “terrorists”. Innocent Palestinians are being denied their right
to live as normal human beings with human rights simply because they are
labelled as Muslim terrorists. Innocent Muslims around the world are being
attacked by the media because they are not doing enough to “condemn” terrorist attacks
which have absolutely nothing to do with them. It broke my heart when I saw a
picture of a little Syrian refugee, who is stuck in the Idomeni refugee
camp on the Greek-Macedonian borders, carrying a sign that said, “Sorry for the
Brussels attacks.” This stereotype has to stop and we must work on it from all
angles, including art. My artwork alone will not make a difference on the
international scale, but if everyone follows this trend, we can all make a
difference together.
The
artist that greatly influenced me calls himself “COMBO”. COMBO, or COMBO
Culture Kidnapper, is a French street
artist who started by doing graffiti
art in 2003 in the South of
France. After seven years spent painting from Monaco to Marseille, he moved to
Paris in 2010 and became an art
director at a major advertising agency.
Putting his spray paint cans aside, he then started doing wheat
paste. Combo’s work focuses around
culture and visual jamming, as illustrated by his cartoon series in which he
manipulates iconic pictures, replacing some elements by others taken from the
comics or the video games universe to change these pictures' meaning according
to what he wants to express. By appealing to generation
Y’s pop culture, Combo hits his
target at heart and takes it back to the unfairness that makes our world
whether cultural, financial or identity-related. The majority of Combo's work
is made of wheat pasted prints that he unpastes and then pastes back on canvas,
giving it a true street feel. Whatever their size and as an advertiser would
do, he always manages to get his work to be seen by as many people as possible.
Combo got noticed by the media in 2012 when he introduced himself in the Chernobyl
Exclusion Zone to paste up real
advertisements that vaunted the nuclear industry, his way to celebrate Fukushima's disaster first birthday. Strongly influenced by the cartoon and
the video game universe, he also put up a massive Simpsons mural, where
America's beloved animated family seems to be having a great time, picnicking
on a grassy mound, all while Homer's nuclear power plant is seen menacingly in
the background. The Simpsons piece, though, has somehow been the only one that
international media relayed. In September 2012, he set up an exhibit for
pigeons right in front of the Centre
Georges Pompidou in Paris, and hung about
twenty of the most famous art pieces at eyes-height of the birds. Early
December, Combo collaborated with other street artists and realized a pop-up
installation place de la Bourse in the 2nd
arrondissement, minutes away from AFP’s
headquarters, to pay a tribute to the 162 homeless persons who died in the
street over the six previous months. In January 2013 he struck again in China,
where he went to denunciate Google’s decision to definitively give up on
getting its service back to mainland China. It’s in the streets of Hong
Kong that he chose to put his work
out, giving a second life to the most recognizable Google pages censored by the Party: Tiananmen Square protests, and Ai
Weiwei’s recent arrest in Tibet. An initiative that led to his first solo exhibit in Paris:
Golden Shield, as per the other name of the “Great
Firewall of China”. Late Spring, Combo came back to
Paris and settled down in the rue des Petits-Carreaux for his second exhibit,
getting a lot of attention both from the neighborhood and the Internets by
pasting up a +30 ft. high portrait of a dandy version
of Yoda. As opposed to most of his projects since Chernobyl, Old-Up didn't have
any political dimension, allowing him to get back to his roots: cartoon.
Finally, on July 14th and to celebrate Bastille
Day he pasted up a massive collage
on the banks of the Canal
Saint-Martin in Paris, realised in
association with theFemen,
a feminist protest group founded in Ukraine in 2008 and now operating out of
Paris. The piece consisted in a reinterpretation of Liberty
leading the people by Delacroix, in which it is
not the Jacobins but
women who march towards their freedom. By jamming such an iconic piece of art,
Combo not only intended to pay a tribute to the activists’ fight, but also to
denunciate the discrimination and other misogynistic behavior women still
suffer too often nowadays. Despite his great works and efforts, I did not hear
about him until I read an article about him in the newspaper. He was attacked
by a gang after refusing to take down a mural calling for religious harmony in
Paris. He was left with a dislocated shoulder and bruises across his face after
being set upon in a ghetto in the east of the capital. He had just finished a
design the featured the word “coexist”. So there was one Muslim trying to
preach peace, and when other non Muslims saw him, they made war.
Biography:
My
name is Georgios Kassapoglou and I was born in Athens, Greece to a Greek father
and a Syrian mother. Both of my parents were Christians and wanted to raise me
to be a Christian like them. There was a point in my life where I was a strong
believer and went to church every week, sometimes even twice a week. Being born
in a Western country, the media there was very stereotypical and spread some
lies at first. But most Greeks, being stubborn, had difficulty believing as
they had many friends abroad and knew exactly what was going on. Having an Arab
mother also helped me eliminate the stereotype of Muslims and terrorists. Today
I am an Atheist but I still highly respect the values that Islam and all
religions preach.
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