The Mexican contemporary artist Said Dokins is on an international tour through Spain, France, Italy, Norway, the United States and Colombia…

…participating in high impact urban art festivals such as Bloop Festival (Ibiza, Spain), Street Art On The Roc (Villars Fontaine, France), Nuart Festival (Stavanger, Norway), Murals In The Market (Detroit, USA), Pictopía (Medellin, Colombia), among others. In this tour he presents his projects ‘Stories Of A Word’ and, in collaboration with the photographer Leonardo Luna ‘Heliograpies Of Memory’. These activities are supported by the Fondo Nacional Para la Cultura y las Artes, FONCA (National Fund for Culture and the Arts ) in Mexico.

In Ibiza Dokins painted a mural as part of the activities of the Bloop OpenAir Gallery Festival, a long-term project created to transform the urban landscapes of Ibiza. Currently, OpenAir Gallery’s collection has reached more than thirty murals and installations throughout the island.

Said Dokins painted a pair of murals in a school playground under the theme “HOPE”. The facades were created together with the children from the institution. After asking each student what Ibiza represented to them, he painted every single word with his unique calligraphy style, which takes up the economy of medieval calligraphy, the energy and expressiveness of Japanese calligraphy, besides creating a poetic based on pre-phonetic writing and pre-hispanic symbols. Using words, the artist accomplished to bring together the murals and the children who carry the future. The title of the artwork ‘Nos Falta La Realidad’ (We Miss The Reality) refers to the ways in which we relate to children and young people nowadays, a call to value their voices for the construction of citizenship.

The mural truly embodies the Bloop festival’s ethos “ART IS FOR EVERYBODY”, that encourages general public to reflect on current social issues through art, breath-taking art that is able to generate connections at diverse levels for everybody. This mural as a part of Said Dokins International Tour project is supported by the Secretaría de Cultura (Ministry of Culture in Mexico), through the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (National Fund for Culture and the Arts).

Photo credit: Leonardo Luna.