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.