Before coming to Copenhagen, a long layover in Dubai presented unique challenges for my mental condition. After being detained for having common personal items, Scandinavia proved to be in stark contrast from the Middle East, providing a liberal and free environment that is conducive to creation. After being in a weird mental funk, I was itching to get my hands into some physical paint. I traveled to Norway for a festival, and then denmark shortly after to visit friends. All of my friends were eager to show me one location- Christiania. This anarchist society is the only place in Denmark to avoid taxes entirely and legalize all recreational soft drugs. This environment welcomes all kinds of street art and was a perfect place to paint a mural of whatever I please.
Without any kind of idea or guidance, I decided to create a small painting of the first drawing that I ever made: a tree with a dna strand as the trunk. Although in a creative block, revisiting this composition allowed me to play with the existing artwork around the site, as well as extending the tree into multiple dimensions.
There were challenges rendering the painting on a highly textured brick surface as well as being mindful not to cover the artwork existing around the composition. Unlike most of the compositions that I create, the tree is anything but symmetrical. It leans starkly to one side and invades my zones of comfort. It embraces the scheme of a limited color palette that I have recently been exploring, playing with the sun in metallics and fading seamlessly into the brick that surrounds it.
tree of life
9’ x 6’
July 2019
Christiania, Denmark