Aden Yemeni artist Alaa Rubil uses the shell-pocked buildings of
his hometown as canvas, painting images of death and despair to
shine a light on the horrors and victims of war.
Not long after the start of the bloody conflict between Yemens
internationally recognised government and Huthi rebel forces, the
southern port city of Aden, where Rubil lives, became the scene of
brutal fighting.
For several months in 2015, artillery rained down on Aden, and
Huthi rockets and mortars fired into densely populated areas killed
dozens of civilians, Human Rights Watch reported at the time.
Rubil, now 30, has been painting murals since we has a teenager,
but found his voice in the aftermath of that round of violence.
I saw that the government was not aware of the people who were
displaced, he told AFP.
I wanted to communicate my message to the world by drawing
people who lost their homes and families, he said.
By using the walls, I could reach the world.
Today, the rubble-strewn streets of Aden double as a
semi-permanent exhibition of Rubils work and a testament to what
the citys inhabitants have lived through.
Feel the people
On the wall of one shop in a particularly hard-hit area, he
painted a large outline of a mans face, but obscured the eyes, nose
and mouth with a cupped palm holding up three sticks of
dynamite.
Across the street, on the interior wall of a bombed-out
apartment building, a piece he calls Silent Suffering depicts a
skeleton playing a violin as peace signs float around its
skull.
In another work, a girl in a red dress sits on the ground with
her head resting in her left hand, next to a black crow perched on
a missile.
Behind her, the girls deceased relatives, rendered in black and
white, peer down from an open window.
The image is based on the true story of a girl who lived in the
area and lost her family in the fighting, Rubil said.
She thinks that war is a game. She thinks that her family is
returning, he said. So she is waiting for them.
Amr Abu Bakr Saeed, 42, who lives nearby, told AFP the paintings
were a dark but necessary tribute to the dead.
When we pass through this place, we feel pain, we feel the
people who were here, he said.
These paintings express the tragedies of the people whose homes
were destroyed and who were displaced, and prove that war really
took place in Yemen.
No one cares
A little more than eight years ago, neighbouring Saudi Arabia
mobilised a coalition to topple the Huthis, who had seized Yemens
capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people either
through combat or knock-on effects such as hunger and
disease. Million...
