Studios: eL Seed

Looking pensive. eL Seed in his new permanent studio in Alserkal Avenue in Dubai. Photos by Sueraya Shaheen

It’s a new week and we start it off with a new series on The Art Blog. Studios are the backstage of the art world. They are where the proverbial ‘magic’ happens and it is always a privilege to visit an artist in their studio. It gives you an insight into their work and practice and helps you understand their concepts.

I have teamed up with Sueraya Shaheen www.suerayashaheen.net to bring you a series of photo essays from inside the studios of some of the many artists we have working in the UAE. Sueraya is a very talented artist herself and has collected an impressive archive of documentary-style portraits of internationally known Middle Eastern artists – which she exhibited for the first time in FotoFest 2014 and continues to add to all the time. We are lucky to have her images on The Art Blog. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

We start off the series with eL Seed elseed-art.com. If you are a follower of my work and my blog, then this French-Tunisian artist should need little introduction. I have been a fan of his work for some time and was thrilled when he announced he would be moving to Dubai and setting up a studio here. Although most of eL Seed's work is done on the street, because he specialises in large-scale and impressively free-hand work that is done for public consumption rather than gallery audiences, he still needs somewhere to think and to practice his designs. Here he is in his studio, which is in Alserkal Avenue, Dubai.