The gaunt bodies, disarticulated limbs, dance like puppets on a wall of the Marais, in the heart of historical Paris. Black ink on blood red background. Impossible, even for the Parisian in a hurry, not to slow down in front of the macabre ballet several meters high. And to read the inscription: "On the body of the Yemenis pass the war, the international hypocrisy, the weapons".
The street artist Murad Subay unveiled on 19 November his fresco, from his series "The last dance of the dead" to challenge the opinion on the war in Yemen, the humanitarian crisis that ensues and the sale of French arms to Saudi Arabia, engaged in the conflict.
"It's based on real stories of people who died in the conflict," says Murad. "It's very important to be here to show that France can play a better role in Yemen than just sell weapons," says the artist, a partner on the project to seven human rights NGOs. .
Since March-2015, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has been supporting the Yemeni government in its fight against Houthi rebels. The conflict - which has claimed more than 233,000 deaths according to UNDP estimates - is behind one of the world's biggest humanitarian crises.
"The war - I can not inspire myself from anything else"
In artistic residency in France since March, the 32-year-old artist enjoys the protection of the Artist Protection Fund, an international program that offers a scholarship and a safe roof for artists in danger.
Murad can once again give free rein to his artistic obsessions - war, crimes against humanity or arms sales. "Art is done with others and is inspired by the environment we live in. I have lived for years in a country at war, my loved ones are still there, so I can not inspire myself something else, not yet, "he explains to France-24.
His latest series, entitled "Bon appétit", ironically denounces "those who gor on the back of those who die". In July-2019, he tagged on the walls of London a grenade disassembled with the legend: "A world of war and blood is a good world for business." Signed: the guilds of arms ".
Art in the ruins
This last campaign continues a work started in Yemen a decade ago. Born in 1987 in Dhamar, in the south-west of Yemen, Murad has known since his youth almost only conflict and war. In 1994, shortly before the beginning of the civil war between secessionists from the South and the government of Ali Abdallah Saleh, president of the time, he moved to the capital Sanaa with his parents and six siblings.
His early political experiences began during the 2008 teacher and student demonstrations while he was at the faculty of English literature. When the Arab Spring reaches Sanaa in January-2011, Murad goes down the street and begins to print his mark on the walls of the capital. He launches his first campaign "Color the Wall of Your Streets", where he invites, via social networks, the protesters to come and take the brushes with him.
The street becomes his favorite painting. In 2012, Murad launches his second campaign, "The walls remember their faces" ("The walls remember their faces"). He painted black and white portraits of more than a hundred missing on the walls of Sanaa, Aden, Taizz and Hodeida.
From then on, the campaigns are linked. In May-2015, after a series of air strikes by the international coalition led by Saudi Arabia in the Bani Hawwat region that killed 27, including 15 children, he launched his series "Ruins" ("Ruins") . Murad Subay turns collapsed houses into works of art. It imposes its style, violent, radical, on the walls of a country where the freedom of expression loses a little more ground every day, according to Amnesty International.
"If we are afraid, we can not be an artist"
According to an Amnesty International report, the two parties in conflict in Yemen are hunting journalists, artists or human rights defenders. As government forces close the doors to foreign journalists, the Houthis are waging intimidation, harassment or arbitrary detention against Yemeni "agitators". Murad's big brother, the journalist Nabil Subay, is paying the price. In 2016, he gets shot in the street in Sanaa. It just escapes, knees in crumbs.
The radical images of Murad, like this fetus locked in a coffin, a raw image of the child whose fate is sealed even before birth, could be worth the same fate.
Murad and Nabil fled to Egypt. A necessary respite for Murad who was having more and more trouble painting in Yemen. "Since 2015, the artists were watched but especially, in the middle of the war, the art passes after the needs of first necessity, as to feed," he recalls. From abroad, he found a new breath to start his work again.
His works are exhibited in museums in London and Murad is known in Europe as the "Yemeni Bansky". A comparison that amuses him, even if it has its limits. "It's an honor for me to be compared to Banksy, I really like his work, but I prefer to be known as Murad," he adds. The international visibility of his work, too, has its limits and could be detrimental to his return to the country. A risk to take: "If we start to be afraid, we can not be an artist, if art does not serve to denounce, what's the use?" Art is a weapon of crucial resistance.