“I’m an urban artist. My language is visual.” This is how Rami Meiri describes his talent for creating evocative, larger-than-life murals.
Meiri’s signature style brings smiles and laughter to all who pass by. Using acrylic paint, boards and sometimes props, Meiri transforms a blank column, wall, or even an entire building, into something worth seeing.
Mr. Meiri was brought to South Africa at the beginning of July as a joint collaboration project between the Embassy of Israel and City Property Administration, a residential and commercial property Management Company, owned by the Wapnick family.
Meiri started his visit to South Africa in Pretoria where his first completed mural depicts two men working on open platforms alongside a high-rise building, while the second mural was on the wall of an orphanage in the CBD; which Meiri did as a workshop with second-year students from the University of Technology and were joined by the staff of City Property Administration.
Then on to Cape Town, where Meiri hosted an interactive workshop at the Zolile Malindi Community Centre in Mfuleni. A group of 14 and 15 year old children worked with Meiri and created a mural of dancing children (pictured) in their art class at the Centre. The Zolile Malindi Centre is an Afrika Tikkun project that offers care from ‘Cradle to Career’.
Meiri says his part was to spread goodwill and cheer, something he has been doing inside Israel for decades. He painted his first mural along Tel Aviv’s beachfront in the ’80s while completing an art degree at Tel Aviv’s Avni Institute — “Tel Aviv needed some beauty and I needed the exposure” — and his quick sketch technique of capturing the lighter side of people in motion quickly caught on. He has continued over the decades creating murals in and outside of Israel.
Indeed, Meiri’s murals inspire smiles and laughter not just in Tel Aviv but around the world and brings communities together in more ways that one can imagine.
