Family Portrait North Bank, River Tigris, Baghdad

Arofish is a graffiti artist living in London who recently went into Iraq, the West Bank, and Gaza “vandalising the already ruined walls - painting over bullet scars.” We were blown away by arofish’s work in the Middle East. For us, the work that he does is incredibly haunting. The people he paints seem to come off the wall and into your soul.

Three Kids Playing Jenin Camp, West Bank

So how did arofish get into Iraq in the middle of a war? He tells us:

“Getting into Iraq was, as we say this side of the pond, a piece of piss (i.e. easily accomplished). For all the blather about security, the war on terrrrrrrrr, the patriot act at your end, the increase in police powers and surveillance at mine, etc (all the bullshit on our homeland(s), in short) - for 12 dollars and a night bus you can go from Amman to Baghdad with minimum fuss. Roadside bombs and kidnappings permitting. That was the way it was a few months ago anyway. Didn’t even get my bag searched at the border. There were one or two little hiches with local security (namely the U.S. army and the Iraqi police) when I was caught graffing though. Funny - with all that noise, who cares about my little bit of “bombing”? Anyway if you’ve got the time, read the stories that go with the pics on the site.”

The Marlboro Kids Communications Tower, Rashid, Baghdad

In regards to his work in the West Bank and Gaza, he writes: “I’m a fairly frequent visitor to Palestine anyway. As frequently as I have the money. I generally get involved with the direct action scene. Once I did a couple of months work for an NGO in Gaza. I might have a sort of journalistic assignment ine the West Bank in a couple of months with a friend. I wound up in Iraq because I was en route to Palestine and - it just sort of seemed a shame not to go and have a look, while I was in the hood, so to speak. Ended up staying 6 weeks. That’s when I really started to take my graffiti work seriously. Now it seems to have sort of followed me back home. Blek le Rat gave me the thumbs up a couple of weeks ago which sort of inspired me to carry on with it.”

A View to Peace The Apartheid Wall, Abu Dis, East Jerusalem

The photos above were nicked from arofish’s website “The Scrawls of War” For each of these pieces arofish writes about his experiences and his thoughts. It’s fascinating stuff.

[via: AraBlog; woostercollective]

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