It’s a funny thing meeting your heroes. Sometimes your left feeling disappointed as in they didn’t actually meet the hype. In some way they didn’t live up to years of built up expectations. None of this applies to my meet with C215. The prolific Parisian street artist has been on my radar since the incarnation of my street art obsession. With clean cut lines, iconic imagery, and breathtaking details C215 stands in his own category of street art mastery. His attention to detail has been witnessed all over the world on the most unlikely of canvases. Portraits and animals are his usual depictions however he never ceases to amaze. From Newcastle to New York, Fez to London – I take great pleasure in sharing a conversation following his return from Morocco.
I have seen your work all over the world from Newcastle England to New York in the USA. However what has been your biggest challenge when in places like Istanbul, Delhi and Morocco?
I think the biggest challenge was in UK, painting my self portrait outside the national portrait gallery last year.
Istanbul taksim was hot! In most of these countries, this is a very good street reception of my works, so I feel really easy painting outside.
I am very often invited for dinners by people living in the areas I am painting. but last week in fès, i proposed a shoeshiner to paint on his box. After I asked him how long he was using that box, he answered with a smile, by saying in a very good French : “14 years. I made it myself”. The old shoeshiner also said to me : “Time only belongs to God .. We are all in a very big ocean. A few human beings can swim, but most of them dive very deep and never reach the surface”. I will never forget this.
Your work has an international feel and overcomes language barriers along with culture gaps! Had you always planned to use the worlds streets, bins, corners, phone booths, and dark door ways as your canvas?
I began to paint in the streets when i was 15 or something like this. Yes the streets are definitely the place where I expect art to be.
What is your favorite “canvas” boat? phone booth? Bin?
I painted a beautiful fisher boat in Casablanca, and a nice rickshaw with a portrait of my daughter in Delhi
The boat in Casablanca
In the dark corners of your past is your first ever stencil; what was this and can you track your progression and see your influences upon your work up to the current day?
It was a portrait of Nina’s mother Ava, dressed in moroccan Atlas tradition. I did it through computer. Three layers. I repeated it there times with posters. Now i am not using computers anymore, I paint direct on the walls, one or two layers maximum, and try not to repeat my stencils, but I continue to paint my family’s portraits
What is left to achieve? What motivates you to cut the next stencil? Is there a “dream project” you are working towards?
Explore new territories, getting resulting that we would not expect through stencils, like emotions.. i am now currently working on clouds ..
The Justice Project
Your passport must have some amazing stamps! Where will 2009 take you?
Norway, Canada, Morocco, England and certainly Romania
Clear from your work is the love and affection for your family, how do they feel about having a prolific artist in the household?
Ahahahah Certainly fed up or bored. Everything is natural for them, as for me ;)
Which artists would you most appreciate being on your wall? Who do you think is making creative waves?
I am a very big fan of Ernest Pignon Ernest, the French founder of street art, he’s the main reference i would quote. Most of the modern streets artists were influenced by this genius.
What were your thoughts on the Justice project? With such a strong identity the visuals were extremely powerful and moving!
The Justice show was a good opportunity to express my feelings about ordinary human people being caught then condemned to jail for any reason. Just being trapped by the justice machine and caught alive in concrete. some of them sentenced to death later, sometimes for nothing. I sincerely think US should abolish death penalty everywhere.
Rickshaw with his daughter on in New Delhi
You can check out more of C215′s work on flickr
