BA Street Art teamed up with Qatar Museums to arrange for Qatari artists to travel to Argentina to paint two new murals in Buenos Aires last week as part of the 2025 Years of Culture program. Photos by BA Street Art.
Collaborative mural being painted by artists from Argentina & Qatar (photo © BA Street Art)
Artists Olivo (from La Plata, Buenos Aires) and Abdulla Al Emadi (from Doha) made a sketch together to create a mural that celebrates Argentine and Qatari culture. And Qatari artist Abdulla Alsallat also created a highly detailed mural with marker pens featuring symbols relating to nature, animals and tradition.
Matt Fox-Tucker from BA Street Art, Argentine street artist Olivo & Dimitrije Bugarski from Qatar Museums (photo © BA Street Art)
Years of Culture is a cultural and arts program sponsored by the Qatari government. The initiative forms part of Jedariart, a program launched in 2020 by Qatar Museums to promote cultural dialogue and transform public spaces through mural art. As part of the international cultural exchange this year, Qatar Museums contacted BA Street Art to plan and organise a mural project for Qatari artists and an Argentine artist to paint together in the city of Buenos Aires.
Coffee break – characters drinking maté & Arabic coffee (photo © BA Street Art)
The new mural in the neighbourhood of Saavedra incorporates different elements of Argentine and Qatari culture. The three characters sitting down together include a cartoon-style bird drinking maté; a figure wearing a traditional Qatari gown known as a ‘bis’ while pouring Arabic coffee known as ‘qahwa’ from a traditional jug, plus a boy on a chair holding a lance.
Argentine street artist Lucho Montolivo (photo © BA Street Art)
Despite linguistic differences between the artists from the two countries, Olivo revealed they managed to make it work. “For this collaboration with Abdulla, we connected digitally and exchanged various sketches. First, he shared his scene with his two characters drinking mate, and then I added mine. It’s a character I’ve been working on for a while. He’s a child traveller who is experiencing scenes from a story, which unfold piece by piece, mural by mural. We expanded the scene to fill the entire wall and also added a starry night. Even in these preliminary exchanges, we were able to grasp the overall concept and decide on colours and relationships.”
Collaboration & colour (photo © BA Street Art)
The Qatar-Argentina-Chile 2025 Year of Culture program also saw Argentine street artist Pablo Harymbat invited to paint a tunnel in Doha in last month; and Animalito Land will be painting a mural for World Wide Walls Doha in December.
Olivo painting details with aerosol (photo © BA Street Art)
Olivo added: “Painting with the guys from Qatar was a real pleasure and our conversations were very interesting and enriching. I was really excited by the idea of sending artists from Qatar here to paint murals and taking part in exchange programs like this one. I think they greatly empower artists and, in turn, the street art scene in each place. I also learned a lot about a different culture, customs and concepts that I was completely unaware of. I hope to be able to travel to Doha in the future to learn even more about their culture, landscapes and traditions, and maybe get the chance to paint a mural there.”
Finished mural (photo © BA Street Art)
The collaborative mural was completed over two days and the landscape also depicts houses similar in architectural style to those found around Doha.
Neighbours (photo © BA Street Art)
The colour and creativity that the new murals have brought to Saavedra have had a positive reaction from local residents, says BA Street Art director Matt Fox-Tucker: “The welcome that the Qatari artists have received from neighbours and passers-by has been amazing.”
Inspiring kids – Dimitrije Bugarski with mother & son (photo © BA Street Art)
A couple of neighbours in Saavedra lent a hand painting a small part of the mural, with Dimitrije Bugarski (artist & planning specialist at Qatar Museums) also helping inspire a young boy to pick up a spray can. “So many people, especially young children with their parents, stopped in front of the mural to stare at it, talk with the artists, watch them paint and discuss what they were looking at with others,” said Matt from BA Street Art. “That’s the power of art – it’s able to break down barriers, bring people together and can help you make friends with people who might live just around the corner that you’ve never met before, or people who live in a country like Qatar that’s thousands of miles away!”
Thanks to Dimitrije Bugarski and Alya Alkhalifa from Qatar Museums, artists Olivo and Abdulla Al Emadi and everyone at BA Street Art. And a big thanks also to Coral and Fede.
Qatari artist Abdulla Alsallat painting a new artwork in Buenos Aires (photo © BA Street Art)
As part of the Years of Culture project, Qatari artist Abdulla Alsallat also painted a beautiful and highly detailed mural in Saavedra that was finished on Thursday. Check out our next blog post with more photos of the new mural by Abdulla Alsallat in Buenos Aires.
All photos © BA Street Art
