5 Famous Calligraffiti Artists And How They Transformed Calligraphy Into Street Art

Pokras Lampas

An artist's life is filled with looking for new and creative things to create. As a photographer, you might be out looking for new horizons to explore, angles to take pictures from, and different editing features. Writers are out looking for stories and testing different plots, perspectives, and points of view.

Painters are transforming various colors into stunning works of art. While calligraffiti is artists use writing to pass a message and transform ordinary things into works of art. In recent years, calligraphy, a form of art that means "beautiful writing," has been gaining popularity in street art, with famous calligraffiti using the walls of nations to write poetry and prose and draw portraits of different people. 

Because street art is known as "razz art", street artists must be open-minded and diverse. Their art has to be all-encompassing, seeing as different people will be experiencing it. 

Here is a list of five famous calligraffiti and how they transformed calligraphy into street art:

Pokras Lampas

Pokras Lampas Calligraphy. Credit: Russian art and Culture.

Pokras Lampas is a Russian calligraffiti known for his calligraphy art. His style of art merges ancient with the street, a unique mix. Pokras Lampas' calligraphy art appeals to every generation, which is one of the things that make him famous. 

His calligraphy art combines various designs with art exhibitions and street art festivals, which helps to push his idea of ancient-street art, which in turn helps in the expression of how the connection to one's ancestry can help one live their life in the present. It also strengthens that art can be in any form and still regain its originality, provided the meanings are not obscured when expressed. 

Khadiga El-Ghawas

Khadiga El-Ghawas

Khadiga El-Ghawas is a light calligrapher, born and brought up in Egypt. He has been a light calligraffiti since 2013 and uses light installations to light up his calligraphy arts, making them explode in meaning and color. She was the first Egyptian calligraffiti and the first female calligraffiti in the world, mastering the art of calligraphy at that time with six other men from all over the world.

Her form of calligraphy art gives comfort to those experiencing it and helps them feel calm. Although she had been practicing calligraphy since she was eight, she only started using light installations to shoot up her art in April 2013. For Khadiga, calligraphy is more than art; it is life.

Said Dokins

Said Dokins

Dokins was born in Mexico in 1983 and often worked on different projects. As a Mexican artist, his projects spanned from things related to urban arts to political commentary and the like. His work oscillated between things that could be seen and things that couldn’t, and he was especially known for his contribution to street art through urban art. Urban art explores technology and civilization. 

Said Dokins Credit: I Support Street art

Dokins' art explored the world, and its intricacies have been showcased both internationally and nationally, like in the United Kingdom, Germany, Holland, and Spain. 

Yazan Halwani 

Yazan Halwani. Credit: Labneh and Facts

A Lebanese artist, Yazan Halwani, is known for his murals, paintings, and graffiti on the walls of Beirut as a way of protesting against the dwindling sectarian economy of Lebanon. His most famous work is the Eternal Sabah, depicting the face of artist and singer Sabah, which is found in the neighborhood of Hamra in Beirut.

Yazan Halwani was born in 1993 and is considered among the youngest graffiti artists in the Middle East and Lebanon. Although his interest in calligraphy started from a young age, Halwani went on to study at the American University of Beirut and Havard Business School, combining art, school, and life.

Ruh Al-Alam

Ruh Al-Alam Credit: Arab News.

Ruh Al-Alam was born in London and only moved to Egypt in 2003. Before starting his journey to fulfill his dream of mastering Arabic calligraphy, he was a designer and artist and has since worked on many projects for different corporations in the Middle East. Like Sony, BBC, and the National Portrait Gallery Channel 4.

Ruh Al-Alam’s work. Credit: AboutHer

His work explores traditionally Arabic calligraphy and spirituality.

For calligraffiti, art is their ability to express themselves and the world they find themselves in through their writing, drawing, or paintings.