A couple of weeks ago, spent Spanish artist Liqen some time im Morocco invited to take part of this year’s Jidar, Toiles de rue festival in Rabat.
After preparing an infinity of sketches, Liqen had to decide between two of them; the first one was some kind of “Moroccan Arcimboldo” with elements described by him as “tajin-eyes, teapot-nose, olives-skin, mint-hair”, etc, and a second one, based on “a Machiavellian and somewhat ironic perception of the modern man.”
After consulting the people in the neighbourhood he decided to go for the second one. According to Liqen, the neighbours told him that they were tired of seeing all kinds of traditional elements on the city walls and that they, in a way, saw themselves reflected in the characters he had created.
Titled “Rush Hour”, the mural depicts busy businessmen and women, in a frenetic attempt to catch up with everything at the same time. Slaves of technology and their busy schedules, these humanoids, half man, half machine hurry around over an empty background, because there is nothing else that matters in their lives.
Regarding the mural Liqen adds:
“Homo capitalist in modern times without background”
A story of hallucination that is phagocytosed from reality.
Chained to a holographic time in which the feelings travel by cable and are stored in pieces processed by machines that program machines, it is at this moment where these mutations are born, the cybernetic meat in the present of a dissolved world that seems to run terrified, driven by the panic of his own control, the control of man over man or the death of magical thinking.
All this “anthropocentric beauty lie” that seems to have been guessed, written or viewed by the wisest ancestors has as its only deception and purpose a life of comfort, placebo and self-enrichment. There is a world tinkered and refined by the power inside this one that dies for lack of curiosity and affection, …every time gets bigger.
Notes under the history of “Humanosys”, Liqen.
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
