User:Charbelgea/sandbox

Considered among the early adopters of Arabic calligraphy in street art, ASHEKMAN is an Arabic street art group that started in 2001 in Beirut Lebanon by identical twin brothers Omar and Mohamed Kabbani. Born in the midst of the Lebanese civil war in the early 80's, the twins witnessed several wars in 3 decades that made them organically start a platform; wwhich they called ASHEKMAN.

ASHEKMAN soon became an outlet the for the twins to fight social, political and religious extremism that fuels the false propaganda about the Middle East. In fact, ASHEKMAN's mission is to revive the Arabic culture in an urban context, to bring back the golden Arab age where poetry, science, and knowledge were exported and translated to all cultures and, finally, to spread a positive message of tolerance. ASHEKMAN style is Arabic Calligraffiti, which is a mixture of classical Arabic calligraphy with modern Arabic graffiti.

To date, the twins tagged over 100 walls in Beirut, Dubai, Jeddah, Kuwait, Doha, Geneva, Birmingham, and Yerevan. Their positive messages and creative approach put them on the map where they were interviewed on CNN, BBC, MTV Europe, Rolling Stones Magazine, Forbes magazine, France 24. In addition, the twins were featured in several books and other major media outlets. Plus, they gave workshops and lectures in prestigious design universities in Beirut and Dubai. One of the most recent and more prominent street art initiatives by ASHEKMAN would be Opration Salam. We painted a gigantic word “Salam” in Arabic calligraphy on 85 building rooftops. The word can only be seen from space. In fact, the initiative couldn’t be any more specific as the word “Salam” translates to peace in English. The project took place in the North of Lebanon, precisely in the infamous Syria street, an area that witnessed a ferocious civil war that ended a couple of years ago. We worked with an NGO (March) and 80 people from both fighting parties, some of which were ex-militiamen. It took us 3 years to prepare for this project with numerous logistical obstacles but we ended up self-financing and executing it in 3 weeks.