QL Exclusive: An interview with Qatari graffiti artist, Thamer Aldossari
Qatar Living speaks to Thamer Aldossari to learn more about his experience being one of the first graffiti artists in Qatar.
Thamer is a local artist. He has a bachelor’s degree in educational art.
He started his journey as an artist by sharing his art on Flickr and that was before all the popularity of other social media platforms.
“Flickr platform was my electronic gallery. Every time I posted my art on this platform, I found a lot of encouragement and this was a huge support to me to keep going with my art,” he said.
“I started my journey as an artist with basic equipment such as papers and pencils. Then when I grew up, I joined an art school, it was where I started sculpting and I found out that I am interested in sculpting more than drawing,” he added.
Later, Thamer started showcasing his sculptures at various galleries and exhibitions.
However, he still experimented and moved to a new style of art using canvas and colors.
“I started to go deep, learning a lot about how to paint on canvas and how to use the different colors. This is when my name started to go viral and everyone started to recognize me from my paintings,” he described.
His last station learning new styles, was the graffiti and the Arabic font schools.
“I found myself inclined toward Graffiti and until now I am absorbed in this kind of art. I think I will stay with this style. This is the kind of art that I have been searching for. Now I can say I consider myself professional in this kind of art,” Thamer said
“Today me and my friend Mubarak Al Malik are considered as the founders of Graffiti art in Qatar,” he added.
Thamer had a great experience doing his graffiti on many walls all over Qatar, such as #999 the Fire Station, Katara, Qatar Foundation, and many other places around the country. However, his most memorable experience was at the Fire Station.
“My experience doing graffiti on the Fire Station’s wall was a big challenge to me because I was in another project at the same time. They asked me and some of my colleagues to paint on the walls of #999 and Qatar was in its first months of the blockade. Not only that, but also it was in the middle of the Holy Month-Ramadan,” he described.
Since childhood, Thamer’s biggest support came from his mother. With her trust, his talent grew stronger.
“My mother is the reason why I became an artist. She encouraged my talent and she supported me to improve my art since my childhood,” he mentioned.
Thamer has always been highly supported and appreciated by Qatar and the people of Qatar.
“The people of Qatar appreciate different, unique and new things, so being a graffiti artist made me see how they look at this kind of art with an appreciation,” he mentioned.
However, Thamer was presented with a challenge at the start of his move into this art as many people in Qatar weren’t aware of the art of graffiti.
“To start this new style of art was not easy in the beginning. It is a new style that we were not used to of and many people considered it as vandalism. This was not easy to start with in the beginning,” he mentioned.
Thamer’s biggest lesson based on his experience is that an artist should experience everything in art and try to learn all kinds of arts before deciding where he or she belongs.
COVID-19 was a tough experience on everyone, and it limited people in different ways.
The situation directly affected Thamer and other graffiti artists who could not go out to paint due to precautionary measures.
On the other hand, Thamer had a positive experience as he turned to another kind of art, namely the Arabic Font, painting, and the sketch.
“The positive thing about this tough period is it made me practice more sketches, and this helped me to improve this kind of art as I need to be very professional in sketching because I have to prepare a sketch every time, I need to do a graffiti,” he described.
Thamer painted a wall in College of North Atlantic for the National Day, which took him about three hours in total.
Thamer concluded with advise to artists, saying “Practice is the most important thing to be an artist. It does not matter what kind of equipment it is, because the artist creates the art not the tools.”
“I remember my professor once mentioned that if you want to know if your artwork is good or not, you should have the audience questioning about it or it won’t be good work,” he ended.
To know more about Thamer and his art, check out his Instagram page: @thamooor
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