eL Seed
1981– · French Tunisian calligraphy artist and muralist
eL Seed (born 1981) is a French Tunisian artist known for integrating Arabic script into murals and graffiti, a practice sometimes called Calligraffiti. Born in Paris to a Tunisian family, he grew up speaking only the Tunisian dialect and did not learn to read or write standard Arabic until his teens, when his interest in his roots awakened.
As a street artist he took his name from the French play Le Cid, which his schoolteacher was reading to the class, a name that in turn traces back to the Arabic term Al Sayed, meaning "the man". He credits the 2011 Tunisian Revolution with opening political space for alternative forms of expression. One year after the uprising began, he painted his first large-scale mural in Kairouan, a calligraphic rendering of a Tunisian poem by Abu al-Qasim al-Husayfi dedicated to those resisting tyranny and injustice. His influences include graffiti artists Hest 1 and Shuck 2, and Arabic poets Mahmoud Darwish and Nizar Qabbani.
His most controversial work was a 2012 painting on a minaret of the Jara Mosque in Gabes, where he chose verses from the Quran with the aim of bringing people together. His art has been exhibited in Berlin, Chicago, Dubai, Paris and São Paulo, and he has painted murals in Melbourne, London and Toronto. He is based in Dubai.