KARACHI: Perhaps you didn’t notice the young man feverishly at work with his paint cans on the wall behind a heap of rubbish near a tall apartment building but you won’t be able to ignore his creation after he is done. It might very well be that the images he makes on the wall will take your mind off that heap of trash.

Young Syed Shees Uddin, who’s only 22 years old, wears many hats. He is a digital artist and a graphic designer by profession besides also being a student of Bachelors. That’s also why he only has the weekends, Saturday and Sunday, for graffiti.

This weekend, he is working on an image signifying the Defence of Pakistan Day. Right next to the wall he is working on is another wall covered in yellow paint with a name and phone number of some quack in bold black. The graffiti artist plans to do something about that, too, if he is left with some extra paint after finishing with his own painting.

His own work has a big ‘September 6’ written in Urdu with a Pakistan Air Force fighter jet on one side. He has also creatively used the same number ‘6’ with September for ‘6’ in ‘1965’ also.

The artist says art can be used to depict a country’s culture or for spreading awareness

“You see ugly wall chalking all over the city with all kinds of advertisements. No one takes permission from anyone to dirty the walls with such chalking but I make it a point to get permission from the area police station before going about my work,” Shees tells Dawn.

Starting since he was just a teenager, he has been making graffiti for eight years now.

“I have always been good at drawing and I got to know about graffiti art through the internet. Such street art is a big thing in the suburbs of New York or many German cities. It can be used to depict a country’s culture or for spreading awareness. Either way it beautifies your city,” he says, adding that he has so far done graffiti on some 50 walls, which includes the walls of the National Stadium bridge, Karachi University and other places in Nazimabad, Gulberg, Dastagir, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, etc.

“Sometimes I am also called in do it as a part of a commercial project so the little bit of money that I make from there I use for my own beautification projects such as this Defence Day project that I am doing right now,” he says.

Shees is very quick. “Well, graffiti art is done with spray paints and spray paints help finish work fast. But I also make a rough sketch on paper first to compose my idea and to decide what colours I want to use,” he says.

“There are not many graffiti artists in the country although one may find many walls here covered with truck art in Karachi, which is also very popular and pretty to look at. But graffiti art and truck art are two separate things,” he points out.

“I recently met with City Administrator Murtaza Wahab sahib, who appreciated my work,” he beams.

“I can do so much more with the support of the government. I want to make all walls colourful and beautiful, call it my way of giving back to my city. There are government buildings, parks, consulate walls, etc., just calling out to me,” he concludes with a smile.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2022