les Fleurs du Mal

les Fleurs du Mal

In 1821, Charles Baudelaire was born to become one of the most influential poets of his time. In his attempt to portray the contradictions of the Parisian seventeenth century’s everyday life, he reshaped the literary forms of poetry. Upon publishing Les Fleurs du Mal, Baudelaire was accused of being a breacher of public morality and many of his poems were forbidden.

In 2015, his visits to me began.

Meanings became more lucid,

More profound

Dissolved the bounds of time

Wounds burst
The flowers of evil sprout again

And mute, they chant
I am the blade, I am the wound

The torturer, the victim

The tattoo, the tattooed

The flower in its blood,

And the orchard of thorns

Les Fleurs du Mal is a collection of thirty nine pieces created digitally using iPad.

The Warlord Toy

The Warlord Toy

Faces

Bearing the lineaments of war

Features of its instincts

Faces raising flags of resistance

In a battle unknown.

A battle resembling a journey of survival

In it,

The occupier protects his spoils

And the enslaved stands against his torturer.

A journey of new births

And of new promised lands

Bearing masters who once were slaves

Masters who’d become
Enslaved by slaves

Bearing a battle
And the lineaments of war.

Portraiture is the art of human nature. The art of identity. Four years after the Egyptian revolution, I was still confused. Between news, reality and opinions. Everything seemed vague and unreal. But unconsciously, my mind was absorbing and calculating. And at some point, The Warlord Toy Series emerged from that process, summing everything up for me in a collection of fourteen imaginary portraits. Created digitally using an iPad, all the portraits share the same drawing base: the face of a dead soldier.