Draft:Raouf Karray

Raouf Karray is a Tunisian graphic designer, illustrator, professor, and artist born in 1951. He currently teaches as a professor at the Institut Supérieure des Arts et Métiers de Sfax in Tunisia.

Education

He studied at the Institut Technologie d’art d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme de Tunis, as well as travelling the world to study primitive art forms in the years 1972-73.

Career

Public Work

He is very well respected in his home country and has been commissioned by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture to create several pieces for public events and spaces, such as Culture magazine and posters for the International Festival of Sfax. His talent of carefully capturing his culture and its history has ensured that he has the position to create physical artistic spaces for Tunisia also. For example, he was commissioned to create murals for the city of Sfax which is hung on the city wall, depicting cultural patterns and imagery of the city's history and population.

He has also taken part in government-funded initiatives to help encourage the significance of Arab design and illustration. In 2004 he was a part of Mejawra, an apprenticeship workshop organized by the Arab Education Forum and held in Mohieddine al-Labbad’s studio in Cairo, to strengthen how the Arab identity is represented within the illustration of children’s books.

Dar Al-Fata Al-Arabi

Karray is heavily involved in researching and teaching about Arab publishing house Dar Al-Fata Al-Arabi- the first children’s publishing house in the Arab world, established in 1974. The publishing house heavily focus on ensuring Palestinian children can access illustrated books. Karray has written articles detailing the publisher's history and significance as well as traveling across the world teaching about Dar Al-Fata Al- Arabi and explaining how the work produced there heavily inspires his own illustration work.

Grandir Éditions

Grandir Éditions is a small French publishing company based in Nimes in the south of France. They focus on publishing primarily traveling and children’s books which are characterised by detailed, charming illustrations that help to depict different cultures and histories of different countries.

. Karray has published and illustrated several books through Grandir Editions, most of which are influenced by Arab culture and heritage. They are full of cultural patterns, deep colours and intricate detail honouring the culture the book is depicting.  Most of the books focus on his home culture of Tunisia. His books created are:

·      La Tunisie,

·      Such a Beautiful Season,

·      Proverbs of Tunisia,

·      The People Want,

·      Birth of a Journey,

·      Riddles of Tunisia and

·      Tunisian Lullabies.

Palestinian Posters

- Karray has designed numerous posters from the early 2000’s onwards, in support of Palestine in the conflict against Israel and their occupation of Palestine.  Said posters have been saved in the Palestinian Poster Project Archives. The purpose of the project can be described by its organiser Dan Walsh as:  “Unlike most of the political art genres of the twentieth century such as those of revolutionary Cuba and the former Soviet Union, which have either died off, been abandoned, or become mere artifacts, the Palestine poster genre continues to evolve. Moreover, the emergence of the Internet has exponentially expanded the genre’s network of creative contributors and amplified the public conversation about contemporary Palestine.” Mirroring his care for children in his illustrated children's books, Karray’s posters mainly focus on how the conflict has impacted the lives of Palestinian children. Contrasting his detailed, hand drawn, book illustrations, his poster design features a modern, bold, powerful style featuring sans serif typography and repeated use of the colour red to symbolise the blood lost. Most of his posters, like Children’s Massacre (2014) and Gaza Embargo (2014), have been created in the early-mid 2010s and so reference mainly the Operation Protective Edge of 2014.