Artwork, with frame added by Street Art Paris, made by Combo during an art residency in Beirut in September, 2014.
Marking the recent tragedy in Beirut, we’ve published for the first time an interview from our archive with Morroccan-French artist, Combo. The artist visited Beirut in 2014 shortly before the Charlie Hebdo murders. Street Art Paris encouraged the artist to visit the city to undertake an art residency at Mansion, a 19C Ottoman villa run as a cooperative space by a group of educated artists, designers and activists, led by trained architect and former teacher at American University in Beirut, Ghassan Maasri, and French politics researcher-turned-dancer and yoga teacher, Sandra Iché. Combo spent a month at the space and connected to his father’s Lebanese Christian roots, returning to Paris to begin putting up the slogan “Coexist”…
What projects do you have planned for the future?
We’re not doing any exhibitions in the near future. I’m going to focus on travel and like what we did in Hong Kong, for each city we visit, we have one direction, one new way, one message.
So you tailor your message to each city?
Yes, we change the style, we change the tools, it’s all about what we want to say. For me the style doesn’t matter, it’s about the message – it’s all about the message.
Have you ever been caught making street art?
In the past when I was caught, nothing happened, but now when I’m caught the police are taking a different attitude – something has changed, but just in Belleville. It’s not like graffiti when you paste-up, it’s really easy to speak to the police when you’re caught. But just in Belleville, something has evolved recently. 
So you’ve been caught a lot of times?
Yes, but I speak well; I have a lot of tricks. When the cops are coming you don’t want to run, you have to stop and tell them what you’re doing. Tell them you know your rights. For example, in Paris every arrondissement has to have a free wall where people can put posters. When an area doesn’t have this space, then I must do what I do, and that’s what I say to the police. And, maybe I’ll stay speaking for one hour, but after that they’ll let me go, because I’m within my rights, and it’s the mayor who doesn’t respect the law.
Is that true?
Yes. I hope. It’s one trick – there are a lot.
So you didn’t have any problems with the cops in Paris?
In Paris, with paste-ups, no, but I think things are beginning to change. For my last exhibition in Paris, police came looking for me, carrying a dossier of my work. Many years ago, I knew about a department at the Gare du Nord police station, focused on [typographic] graffiti artists. It would build a file on you and then come to your house and arrest you. I think this is beginning to happen, too, with street artists. This was why Fred le Chevalier was caught.
What do you feel about the future of street art?
You know why people like Bansky? Because when you have a Banksy on the side of your house, it adds €1 million to its value. But, street art cannot be loved by everyone. It has also to be subversive.
But what about work by Fred le Chevalier. Is this subversive, in any way?
You have different types of subversion: the beginning is simply to put something in the streets. But, you have go further than that, you have to climb maybe three or four steps up from that, I think. When you work and your grandmother loves your work, I think, it’s really wrong – you really fucked up. If she likes what you do, it’s really very shit. You have to change something; you have to shock. Because [street artists] are made for that.
Like the lion, you have to kill the king to take his space. You have to develop and push upwards. Fred le Chevalier is good, but not enough. What he does is very respectable. For Fred he wants to make some poetry in the streets, it’s nice.
Combo poses in front of street art in Beirut.
How is graffiti and street art similar to advertising?
Advertising is inside of graffiti; graffiti takes the code of advertising. Graffiti has to do the same thing; it has to go in the streets, to take a wall, and to say something. It has to have a message, and this is the work of an advertising man, so this is why it really looks like the same.
There are lots of street artists right back to the ‘70s and into the ‘90s who have learnt about advertising, about the typography, about the message.
I don’t like a lot of street artists but I do like Banksy, but I do have to say I think that he has become old. What he does now lacks strength. What he did last year for the Olympic games was not very interesting. A man running to jump over a fence, and after that, what?
We are in a new period of change in street art, because Banksy is one of the best for now, but there are artists who are a lot younger, a new generation, and we come with a new vision, of art, of life, a new way of doing the things that we feel, and we have new tools. We learn about Banksy and about Obey, Futura, but we have our style. I can take from Banksy, but after I’m going to kill him. It’s like in life, you have to kill the father. It’s your duty.
I stopped painting graffiti about four years ago, and it was after I saw [Exit Through the Gift Shop] and I was in Paris, that I really started to do street art, but it’s not like what I do now. And there are lots of others like me, who have been influenced. The film came out in 2011 and since then the attitude has been that we’re going to fuck the streets. The film changed our minds. We were already street artists, but after the film it made us realise that we can go further than we had thought.
How can you claim Bansky is out of ideas, even though the film that most inspired you as a street artist was his idea?
The fake banknotes with Lady Diana’s face, the message is really strong, and that is really artistic, and this why he inspires us – not only me. Because street art is not only a tool, it’s not just a paste-up, or a [spray can], or a stencil, it’s a spirit. It’s inside of us, and we have to do what we do because we have a message, we have to talk about something, or we have something to denounce; we have to be subversive. For my generation, we don’t have punk, rock sucks; where is our generation? What are our underground movements? The only one that exists now is street art.
How do you see street art in connection with the recent popular uprisings that happened in North Africa?
To start, it’s important to distinguish between countries in North Africa, as just like European history, in Italy and France, for example, it’s not really the same. The Moroccan doesn’t speak like the Egyptian, the Egyptian doesn’t speak like the Tunisian, and the Tunisian doesn’t speak like the Syrian. We have the same face but really a very different culture. The power structures are all very different, too. We have a problem in Europe, we’re talking about the African man, we’re not talking about citizens of a particular country. This attitude is a statue of colonialism. It’s like when we see somebody from Asia, we say that they’re Chinese, because we don’t understand.
Combo’s live-work atelier space at Pigalle in the 9th arrondissement in 2014.
You went to China didn’t you?
Yes, I went to Hong Kong, which is different to continental China, just as continental Beijng is different to Shanghai, and so on. I can do what I do in Hong Kong, but when I tried to do it in Beijing, I was almost arrested. It’s very different, and during the summer, for example, Hong Kong saw a huge manifestation of people who want to separate from China and live under a democracy. It was very nice. We were talking about Egypt, but in Hong Kong, too, the force for change is also very strong. They really don’t like the politics of Beijing.
Was there much other street art in Hong Kong?
Yes, there was a lot, especially by the Hong Kong-based crew, Start from Zero. You can also find work by Obey, and Kidult, among others, but only in the European neighbourhood. When you go to the Chinese district there are only works by Start from zero, which is campaigning for change, and to ‘start from zero’. However, they cannot speak out against Beijing, or that Ai Wei Wei has been arrested, because when you live there and you get arrested you cannot escape back to Paris.
How long have you been a street artist?
I’ve been working in this way for around two years. For round six years before, I was a graffiti artist in the south of France, Nice, Monaco, Marseille, as part of a crew. I was the character designer. It was nice, but I was younger. I stopped because in graffiti you can’t say all that you want to say. You must either make a name, a letter, a b-boy character, or something like that, and this is why I stopped, because I was really frustrated.
What about the fresh style of graffiti Horfée and his crew are creating?
I like Horfee because he came into graffiti with a new style, a really new style, but then after that, maybe two years, his style didn’t evolve. In graffiti, the style changes, but then after that, what happens, nothing. It’s just a drawing, it’s just graffiti. That’s it.
What about someone saying that your work is just advertising?
It’s not the same. For me street art has to have a message. Graffiti has twenty or thirty years of history and it has to change. Art has to change, it has to evolve. For me graffiti is artisanal, like when people have one skill and all their life they make the same thing. I can’t say I don’t like it, I really like it, because I’m from that, but you have to evolve, like a man has to evolve in life. In graffiti you have to put your name all over the city, and after that? You are what, a dog? What’s the message, why are you doing that, seriously, you’re not a teenager. Horfee is nice, L’Atlas is nice, Cony is nice, but, we have to evolve.
Combo with politician Jack Lang outside of the Institut du Monde Arabe in 2015.
What social background would you say most street artists come from ?
What’s important in street art is not where you’re from, but, rather, your work. We’re now a wiki-society, where with the internet, with technology, we can learn about lots of different things, we can learn about everything. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a professor or you have a piece of paper with your name on it. Now we all are able to know. You have an iPhone, you know.
Because if I say ‘yeah, I’m rich’, you say ‘yeah, he has the tools to do what he does’, if I say ‘I’m poor’, you say ‘he has courage’. It’s not about that. There are a lot of rich people who have to fight against their parents – it’s not black and white. What I learned in graffiti is that when you don’t have the money you have to steal your cans. But it’s my way, if you want to pay, it’s ok. If you get caught painting the streets and you get put in jail, but your dad is a lawyer and gets you out, the result is still the same. When you have to fuck up the streets you cannot pay for that, but that’s my way. And if you want to pay, it’s ok, it’s your way.
When you go in the streets you take the same risks. It’s the public area, and street art is the voice, and you have the voice, you take the lead, and if you have the lead, it’s like taking the power. When you make street art it’s like a little bit of pooch on the wall, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, because you want to change something. If you do street art it’s because you don’t want to stay with you parents in your house and play Xbox.
How do you cope with the fact that it’s ephemeral, that you want to make a push to change things, but after one or two or three weeks your artworks disappear?
When you put something in the streets, it’s no longer yours, it’s ours, and it’s for all of us. When my work gets removed I’m sad, but the good question to ask is what I would I feel if someone put something on my house illegally. I wouldn’t like it and I’d clean it off because it’s dirty. For me it’s nice, and it’s my work, and I spend a lot of time, and a lot of money, but it’s not my wall. That’s it.
It would be different if it were a public street art wall?
For now, I never do work that’s authorised. The streets are for everybody. When you find an advertising billboard in the streets, do you think about who pays for the advertising, we don’t care, because someone came and put it there. For me it’s a public area and for me you can do what you want in the public area. You can speak, you can cry, you can do what you want, if I want to go and put up my work I can do it.
Who are you putting up your work for?
I’m doing it for the viewer.
What do expect that person to think and feel about your work?
I cannot expect a particular reaction because we are from separate cultures, with separate languages, and we cannot understand the same thing in the same picture. If someone understands one or two things in one of my pictures, then I’m really happy. But after that, I cannot expect anything. I just cross my fingers.
Combo pasting laser printed multiples in the 2nd arrondissement in Paris in 2013.
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Interview made at Jules Joffrin, Paris in July, 2013.
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