Untitled (041A7622), 2024
29.7 x 42.0 cm
This work is by Mohammad, one of the more complicated children Karine Wehbé, the founder of the organisation Streetcolors, has worked with. He took Hatim’s place when he left with his family for Syria, in their room in the apartment block near the parking lot. Mohammad’s family experienced life under Daesh (ISIS), then fled to Lebanon, lived in a camp, moving a lot, and finally getting there temporarily. He was 10 and was already working with his father and also got a job at a hairdresser’s, working every day to help his family, who came to depend on him.
So when he created this work, he took the image from a picture he saw on a phone, Wehbé feels psychological state of mind that he expressed, something very dark. All the drawings he did are very, very dark. He loves using black a lot. It could be an image of himself, she feels, emerging from the darkness.
In summer 2025, he did a shockingly courageous act. Mohammad left with his family for Syria even though he wanted to stay with his father, who was going to remain in Beirut for work, but in the end he joined the others. After a few days away, he showed up alone. He had left from a suburb in Damascus, went through the frontiers, swam across the sea, and got back to their exact location in Beirut over two days of journey. One can witness his wild and independent spirit in this work.
Medium: Painting
Frame: unframed
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Close considerations
This psychologically charged painting is a result of a fast, wet-on-dry brushwork with stark scumbling and drags. The strong contrast of black, red and purple against the white packs a graphic punch. The figurative emerges from within an abstract composition built around a central head as the mess and turbulence on either side creates a threatening atmosphere.
The red circular close-set eyes ominously look out above a mouth that seems to not be grinning but exposing the teeth because the layer to conceal them doesn’t exist. Its a theatrical piece aiming at a presence, recalling the totems of deities in pagan systems.
The black and grey colour scheme establishes density and asserts a blunt physicality, while the red introduces urgency in the eyes and the sweeping strokes, aggressive and hot. Read as blood we see it gushing out of the figure, along with the black that seems to give it the form of the head, helmet, arms that resemble scythes, and swirling circular lower body. The figure bleeds into the surrounding glaring and exposed white space that exudes emptiness.
The carnivalesque head without the flesh of the mouth shows the white emptiness behind, creating a boundary between inside and outside which makes it more disturbing and comical as it is emphasised here with so many teeth. The playfulness and menace cannot be regarded in either register in a singular way.
The signature of Mohammad in arabic in electric purple resembles the graffiti style of tagging with symbols as marker of a sealed aesthetic culture.
Process
This ink and paint on paper work is made in the same way as most children's at Streetcolors Beirut; sat down, bent over, and standing over the work and through several sessions, and developing styles that are their own with specific sets of forms, colours of interest, and patterns distinguishing them from one another.
They are supported by the volunteers who help them handle their tools and prevent them from creating a violent mess. Children who started making artwork with them have found a balance in their mental states. Those who started out frozen and unable to speak found the ability to expand their scope and began making friends; and those who started out extremely violent and aggressive became more settled over time.
Visual echoes
The artistic echoes with Mohammad's work include Robert Nava’s feral monsters rendered in fast improvisation with playful menace in the eyes and teeth; the raw and urgent mark-making with the graffiti tag of Jean-Michel Basquiat; and the figuration emerging out of aggressive brushwork of Asger Jorn’s paintings.