WAONE from the popular duo Interesni Kazki published a few minutes ago few images of his last mural, painted in the beautiful city of Rabat in Morocco.
Titled “Magician of Maghreb” and painted for this year’s JIDAR Toiles de rue festival, the new mural is unusually colourful, specially if we have in consideration that WAONE has dedicated the last couple of years to work on black and white compositions.
According to the artist, colourful compositions are quite demanding and take a lot of time, and it’s probably the reason he has been avoiding them a bit during the last time, until now.
In this occasion he decided to go for both a colourful palette and a traditional theme focusing on local traditions and culture. The scene depicts a berber, sitting in a usual “oriental pose”, at least in western eyes. The Berber wears a classic bright indigo djellaba, and is depicted doing some kind magic ritual accompanied by music, maghrebi mint tea and a dancing dervish standing behind him on a flying open book. According to some some sources, witchcraft and shamanism are enormously developed in Morocco, and even when WAONE didn’t see any or anything, he tells that you can find all the ingredients for any magic ritual in every market.
About the experience, he recalls: “I was impressed by the history and culture of indigenous white people of the Northern Africa. Unbelievable, according to different sources their history stretching back up to 11 thousands years. They had preserved their culture essentially unchanged despite the conquests of Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans and Arabs. When i saw their modern alphabet, it reminded me some cosmic hieroglyphs or prehistoric petroglyphs that i saw in the museum of Vatican.”
A lovely mural in the most pure Waonian Interesni Kazki style. An amazing splash of colour and magic. What do you think?
Magic ritual with flute, which snake charmers use in their shows in Morocco, Maghrebi mint tea (“As bitter as death, as sweet as life, as enjoyable as love”,- as moroccan people say, and so hot that seems it evaporate before reaching the cup) and dancing dervish, who represents Islam, brought to Berbers by nomadic sufi man.
Hidden face. Berbers of Sahara, or Tuareg people are the world`s only tribe where men covers their faces with a bandana.
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.
