Identity and ‘Difference’ in French Art: El Seed's Calligraffiti from Street to Web

Summary

The attempts to ban the burkini on numerous beaches in the summer of 2016 highlight the extent of fears of visual signifiers of perceived Arabo-Muslim ‘difference’ in public spaces in France. Such fears have been exacerbated by the terrorist attacks in France, particularly those in Paris and Nice in 2015 and 2016. Yet, their escalation was already evident in debates that led to the law forbidding the burka in public spaces in 2010 and the law of 2004 regarding banning signs of religious expression in state institutions.

Given these anxieties surrounding the public visibility of ‘difference’, the positive reception of El Seed's Arabic graffiti – or calligraffiti – in Paris might seem surprising. This artist has received several commissions to paint at central sites in the French capital. His striking monumental murals of boldly coloured lettering have adorned landmarks including the Tour Paris 13 (2013), the Institut du Monde Arabe (2014), and the Pont des Arts (2015). El Seed's calligraffiti is intended to counter clichés surrounding Arabs and Muslims in France and beyond. His use of Arabic is, as he states, ‘a response to the globalization of “Western” culture’, which ‘has effectively shut up and shut down expressions of difference’ (2011: 103–04). It allows him to make ‘a statement against the particularly hegemonic role of language and the part it inevitably plays in spreading the globalized monoculture’ (El Seed, 2011: 104). El Seed has worked in diverse contexts across the world, adapting his calligraffiti to sites including the Jara mosque in Gabès, Tunisia (2012), the roof of an art school in the Vidigal favela in Rio (2014), and an ensemble of apartment blocks in the Manshiyat Nasr neighbourhood of Cairo (2016). In each context, the artist responds to tensions between specific communities and aims to ‘bridge cultural divides’ (Zoghbi and Karl introduction, in El Seed, 2011: 101).

Focusing on El Seed's calligraffiti, this chapter asks how art can encourage dialogue and tolerance between cultures and communities in local – particularly Parisian – contexts and in a globalized frame. How does El Seed bring Arabic writing, a visual signifier of ‘difference’, into the public spaces of the French capital? How does he use public sites within and beyond France? How does the digital online presence of his multisited ephemeral work signal new means of evoking cultural identity and of interpolating diversely located spectators?