'Living Walls - Street art with Mohamed Abla, Yogesh Saini

"Living Walls - Street Art", a celebration of music, dance, theatre, visual arts, food and wellbeing is currently underway here as part of the ongoing "India by the Nile 2017" exposition currently underway here.

Organised by the Indian Embassy in collaboration with Teamwork Arts, "Living Walls" offers a space for experts and amateurs to express and share their thoughts through the medium of street art.

Renowned Egyptian painter Mohamed Abla will team up with noted Indian artist Yogesh Saini to paint a wall in Cairo, in association with local bodies, including the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Culture and the General Association of National Institutes.

The two artists will be joined by Egyptian school students, who are the winners of last year's "Glimpses of India" painting competition organised every year by the Indian Embassy in Cairo.

This will offer a learning platform for the young participants to unleash their talents. The artists and the participants will work together to create a celebration of Indian and Egyptian culture through art.

Abla is known for his paintings of abstract sceneries in Egypt. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Alexandria in 1978, and held his first exhibition the same year.

He has participated in several exhibitions, including Kuwait Biennale and Havana Biennale, Cuba. He is the recipient of several prestigious prizes in Egypt and abroad.

In 2007, he founded The Fayoum Art Center, a space for artists to meet, work and collaborate. In 2009, Mr.Abla established the first caricature museum in the Middle East. In 2009, the League of Arab States selected him to organise an exhibition in New Delhi.

In 2010, he went to India for a second time at the invitation of India's premier arts institution.

Yogesh Saini is an engineer and an MBA-graduate with a strong creative streak and interest in the public domain.

After a career, including corporate leadership stints in the US, Hong Kong and Taiwan as well as founding technology start-ups in the Silicon Valley, Saini has found a niche that allows him to merge his business skills with artistic expression.

As an artist and an art designer, Saini is involved with conceptualization and creation of hundreds of original art works through his organization -- Delhi Street Art.

One of Saini's first art initiatives was to convert all the 150 garbage bins of Lodi Gardens into public canvases on which amateur and professional artists alike could experiment with their creativity.

Right in the heart of Khan Market, Delhi Street Art partnered with Abla to complete an art restoration of a run-down wall and, in the process, also created a tribute to the Paris terror attack victims.

"Living Walls -- Street Art" began on March 21 and will run till March 23 at the Zamalek branch of Lycee Al Horreya school.

--IANS

soni/vm