Touring the Hashemi Shamali Open Air Museum was fascinating on many levels. The east Amman neighborhood was military housing in the 1970s. Today, it exhibits 28 murals painted by artists to enhance the urban landscape, make it more interesting, and provide color.
The neighborhood is home to a community of Palestinian, Syrian, Armenian, and Iraqi refugees, and it’s decidedly different than other areas of Amman I’ve explored. The tour began at 10:00 a.m., and unsure of exactly how long it would take to get there, I was the first of the group to arrive. Friday and Saturday are weekends in Jordan, so there is considerably less traffic gridlock.
Artist Suhaib Attar
As the uber driver pulled up to the meeting point, I was excited to see a mural project in process. From a blue construction crane, artist Suhaib Attar was painting a mural commissioned by the US Embassy for International Women’s Day. He’s collaborating on the mural with Suha Sultan and other local artists. Little did I know, Suhaib was the artist responsible for creating the Hashemi Shamali Open-Air Museum Project. He was born and raised in Hashemi Shamali, and remains closely connected with the neighborhood and its residents. His family still lives there.
For over a decade, Suhaib has collaborated with local and international artists, like popular Australian street artist and “social realist painter” Fintan Magee. Together, they’ve created extraordinary murals throughout the neighborhood, building an exciting “open-air canvas for street artists”!
Jordan was one of the first countries to celebrate streetart and graffiti. Through Suhaib’s efforts, street murals in Hashemi Shamali were legalized by a partnership between the artists and Amman government. More importantly, the artists won the “trust and support of their local community“.
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“Street artists around the world share the same three values – Love, Peace, Unity.” forumZFD
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Alaeddin Rahmeh and Amman’s Hip-Hop Community
Our guide, Alaeddin Rahmeh, is from the Palestinian city of Jaffa. Alaeddin also led the Underground Amman tour of downtown streetart that I enjoyed a few weeks ago. He’s a multi-talented breakdancer whose father is an Imam. Alaeddin shared some of his experiences growing up in Amman’s working-class Jabal Al-Nuzha neighborhood and living in refugee camps “surrounded by violence and a lack of education“. On a lighter note, he also shared his favorite anime – Hunter x Hunter.
Beginning in the early 2000s, Alaeddin and other artists from the Amman hip- hop community used innovative means to learn breakdancing. They honed their skills by spending hours watching and imitating VHS tapes of German break dancers shared with them by a friend from Dubai
Alaeddin and his wife, Hannah, started an artist’s organization, Underground Amman. The organization develops and supports Jordan’s streetart and hip-hop community as an “artistic catalyst for change“.
In partnership with the Jordanian National Gallery of Fine Arts, Underground Amman offers a venture called Tales of Jordan. With this endeavor, they “work on a variety of interesting projects in collaboration with artists from the local hip-hop community”.
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“Graffiti artist Suhaib Attar says his goal is to brighten up Amman and help people think outside the box.” Zab Mustefa/Al Jazeera
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Murals
Several of the murals were influenced by Hashemi Shamali residents, including curious neighborhood children fascinated by the compositions. One of the first and best-known murals is a portrait of a young Syrian refugee girl from Azraq wearing a Mickey Mouse hoodie. Suhaib painted the mural in collaboration with Australian artist Fintan Magee. The girl in the mural was a student in an art education project for refugee orphans supported by Magee and Suhaib. The talented seven-year-old never missed a class and collaborated with them on neighborhood murals.
During the tour, we saw a small number of the total murals created in Hashemi Shamali and other neighborhoods in Amman. The murals and artists each have a unique story. Sometimes the theme is obvious just by observing the mural. Understanding other murals requires a deeper knowledge of local history and spending time in Amman and the Middle East. Some themes may be on the cusp of crossing the red line associated with three of Jordan’s taboo subjects – politics, religion, and sex. Objectionable murals can be painted over, but that doesn’t happen often.
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“Our aim is to amplify the voices of marginalized groups and put their ideas and identities in the public space.” Suhaib Attar
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I won’t delve into technical elements of mural painting that are over my head. When creating a mural, there are many considerations, beginning with the different methods you can choose to “scale” the painting – outline, smartphone, grid, or freehand. Many murals were created during annual Amman Baladk Street Art Festivals. Since 2012, regional and international street artists have visited Amman during the Baladk Festival to collaborate and create new murals.
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“Every mural holds another meaning; reflecting the gaps between tradition and modernity in Arab society; of femininity and gender norms; of a generation of youth challenging traditional norms embedded within a conservative society.” Hannah Davis The New Arab
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Buildings
Along the southern face of the first three buildings, there’s a three-part Arabic calligraphy installation (calligraffiti) by local artists, with the words – “Art/is/the environment“. The neighborhood buildings are a maze of square concrete blocks with three-stories, no balconies, and few windows – a perfect canvas for creating colorful street murals. Depending on their complexity and size, most streetart projects take between 2 to 6 days to complete.
Hashemi Shamali neighborhood forms the shape of a triangle, where each building is offset slightly from the previous one. As you walk southeast from the tour starting point, each building emerges from behind the last, revealing bright colors and vivid images that “surprise you at every turn”.
A few Baladk-commissioned artists who visited Amman to participate in large murals secretly created smaller paintings in “random, hidden places” spread out among the buildings. In some cases, it took local artists days to find the undisclosed paintings!
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“Street artists use their talents to make important social issues that are usually overlooked more visible to the public.” Underground Amman
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Empowering Women
Some murals follow the theme Empowering Women through Painting. addressing “gender inequality in regard to social justice”. In 2019, the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts published a “one-of-a-kind bilingual book celebrating the female art scene in Jordan”. It features the “stories and paintings of 88 extraordinary women artists from diverse backgrounds“. There are many successful, talented female street artists. A mural by Dina Saadi entitled Reflections is a favorite of mine. Saadi “uses art to speak her mind, express emotions, and showcase her ideas”. Born in Russia and raised in Syria, Saadi is currently based in Dubai.
A portion of the book’s proceeds goes to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Jordan River Foundation (JRF). Funds are “invested in psychosocial and legal programs helping women exposed to gender-based violence”.
It was a large tour group, so I missed some of the nuances and narrative shared. I’ve done my best with photos and artist names. Some murals are captioned, the titles of others escaped me. Suhaib and Alaeddin are impressive, dedicated young artists, and I highly recommend this educational and visually delightful tour.
Pigeons!
I had a surprise revelation during the tour, when I overheard a conversation about Amman’s pigeons. In a previous post, I mentioned my fascination with flocks of birds that appear at dusk flying in formation – seemingly “buzzing” the windows of my flat in Jabal Amman. Those birds are pigeons! During the coronavirus lockdown, pet pigeons provided an escape from stress, and became a source of solace for some Jordanians.
Arabian pigeon keeping and flying is a popular hobby in Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries. Some breeders care for hundreds of pigeons on their rooftops. Using a whistle or stick with a net attached to it, they call their birds back to the roof. Pigeon breeding is big business in Jordan. People from nearby countries, like Lebanon and Syria, come to Jordan to buy birds and learn how to keep them. Rare pigeon breeds sell for as much as 1000 Jordanian dinars (JOD) or about ($1400).