Hani Shihada's work can be seen as more than just copies of masterworks. There is, first of all, the question of materials--pastels and acrylic--and, of course, that of surface--the concrete squares of the city sidewalks. Already one can say that the originals have been transformed by their new medium, neither fresco nor oil, and their location, neither palaces nor churches. He does follow the Italian tradition of the madonnari (see New Yorker article), but the context and circumstances become quite different in our own time.

There is also the question of scale. Mr. Shihada chooses his subjects from printed photos, some in black and white, and focuses on fragments of a whole work, which he enlarges to a heroic scale, often coloring them from memory. These fragments now inhabit a different space, removed from their contextual whole, and, as fragments, force us to think about what is excluded, the unseen rest of the original work and its original purpose. Recognition, memory, familiarity and knowledge become part of the viewer's gaze upon those figures projected with a thin layer of seemingly fragile material over the hard concrete grid.

Then there is the question of fragility. Onlookers often ask Mr. Shihada about the fate of the pieces. It would seem only obvious that the elements, combined with pedestrian traffic, would be devastating to pastels. But the pastels he uses--he makes them himself--as well as the thin film of acrylic he applies to the finished work, allow for the survival of the pieces in their sidewalk galleries for longer than thought possible. Nonetheless, the work does eventually vanish, unlike the prized originals, and their dissapearance over time reminds one of the fragility of beauty.

Performance is also an element of Mr. Shihada's work. The act of drawing on a public sidewalk--each work takes at least a week to complete--not only exposes to onlookers the process involved in creating such work, but raises issues regarding public space and its use. Mr. Shihada's artistic performances may clash with ideas of public decorum, individual expression, and the law, as experienced by Mr. Shihada in his encounters with overeager policemen, who see his work more as vandalism than as a temporary expression of delight.

All in all, Mr. Shihada's work can be said to be part of a conceptual act involving more than just the recreation of art from another time, or as we can put it in today's terms, an act of appropiation. It can speak to us about the public realm, the act of creation, and the relationship of memory, time, and action, giving us more than just a fragment from the Sistine ceiling, like a postcard, but allowing us to think beyond the reality of the nice drawing on the floor towards the very nature of Art.

George Queral