Ernesto Maranje’s Street Art Mural The Rhino and the Oxpecker in Lebanon, 2017

Awareness and Prevention Through Art aptART are back again with ‘Paint outside the lines’, an international street art campaign, highlighting the importance of inclusive and diverse communities. Last year we saw the project with Ernesto Maranje in Portland.

This year aptART launched ‘Paint Outside The Lines’ project in Lebanon, working with youth from Syria, Palestine and Lebanon together to paint walls across Beirut and inside refugee camps to promote coexistence. AptART also had support from UNHCR Lebanon and Montana Cans (official).

“While still recovering from it’s own civil war, Lebanon has taken in huge numbers of refugees fleeing the current conflict in Syria as well as Iraq and Palestine. One in every five people living in Lebanon is a refugee from another country. Lebanon’s recent civil war combined with scarcity of jobs, resources and space causes tensions between people from different backgrounds.” aptART

“To understand the importance of diversity and how people can work together for mutual benefit, children were involved in workshops drawing the symbiotic relationships they see in nature. Their examples ranged from bees and flowers on land to clownfish and sea enemy in the ocean.” aptART

“They wrote ideas and drew pictures inside bright leaves that cascade up the wall. Ernesto Maranje then painted a giant black rhinoceros who shares a symbiotic relationship with Oxpeckers, or tick birds which sit on the rhino and eat ticks, blood sores and even warn the rhinos of danger.”  aptART 

Ernesto maranje’s latest mural ‘The Rhino and the Oxpecker’ serves as a reminder of how diversity can be a benefit rather than a burden.

Photo Credit Selina Miles / aptART

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