eL Seed: Arabic Calligraffiti

This week on Babel, Jon Alterman speaks with eL Seed, an award-winning French-Tunisian artist whose monumental artwork blending the styles of Arabic calligraphy and graffiti is spreading in the Arab world and far beyond. His smaller works are in some of the most important museum collections around the world, but he takes special pride in his process of working with communities to select meaningful quotations to inspire his art and then to execute that artwork together. Jon and eL Seed discuss the cultural and political forces that shaped eL Seed's artistic evolution, as well as art’s role in spurring social change. Then, Jon continues the conversation with Martin Pimentel and Natasha Hall to discuss the ways art anchors Middle Eastern diaspora communities to their homelands and interacts with political movements across the Arab world. Transcript, "eL Seed: Arabic Calligraffiti," CSIS, January 14, 2025.