A long-standing advocate of the local cultural scene, the facade of Le Gray hotel is now home to a new mural, born out of the desolation of last month’s Beirut Port blast.
Once a glass front showing a colorful lobby and brightly-lit café, black metal sheets now separate the hotel’s interior from the exterior. Le Gray has been forced to shut its doors for about a year to complete repairs.
The metal sheets were installed on Aug. 9, after protesters set fire to the hotel’s wooden hoarding during violent clashes between protesters and security forces -- fueled by rage at what demonstrators regard as the criminal negligence of the state.
Now the dark surface is decorated by a bright mural centering on the word “hope” in large red letters, with a pair of doves sitting in front, surveying an urban landscape of Lebanese sandstone houses.
Created by street artist Alfred Badr, aka EpS, and artists Spaz and Exist, the mural was chosen and tweaked from several ideas they’d proposed to the hotel.
When the original wooden hoarding was erected, EpS had expressed interest in creating some art there to liven it up. After the blast Le Gray took him up on the offer.
“It’s a common effort between the hotel and us, in a way,” EpS said. “These two artists are good friends of mine who I work with a lot and on the day of the explosion I was with them in their home in Geitawi. So when I was thinking of doing the mural I couldn’t see myself doing it without them.
“It took about two days to do it, all in spray paint and some acrylic for the bigger surfaces,” he added. “The feedback is quite positive, I’ve had a lot of heartwarming messages and people relating to the message, which was the goal of the project and what we wanted to convey amid this catastrophe that we’re going through.”
It’s possible that the trio could work on another mural on the other side of the hotel, though nothing is confirmed yet. In the meantime, EpS is planning other street art projects.
“Beirut has changed a lot and it used to be our playground in a way,” he said. “Now it’s completely different, the way we look at the walls and what to express on them is different. I think there are things to do within what happened and the new layout we had, so it’s about scouting and researching and seeing what’s next.”
The black metal hoarding is “the opposite of what the hotel represents,” Le Gray marketing and PR director Rita Chbeir Saad told The Daily Star, “and we thought we shouldn’t leave it looking so sad.
“We turned to art. We have more than 550 pieces of art in the hotel and we thought of hope, which is the only thing keeping us going against all odds,” she added. “First it was the economic crisis, then the security issues. Finally the blast ... Art was the only way to make this metallic fence beautiful and give it some color.”
This article has been adapted from its original source.
