If you have been following Tunisia’s hip-hop/street art movement lately, and looking for creative and fresh artists just as the same we do, then you’ve surely bumped into a picture or two, maybe more, of both arabic and english stylish letters and drawings carrying the name of “el Hokka”.
We had a chance to work with them during our last event, Breakreate X Urban Whyz Festival and our interest in them is just growing everyday!
So we decided to interview them and share with you their story!
el Hokka الحكة, which means in the Tunisian dialect, a small space/box. el Hokka is indeed a really small place but that doesn’t hide the fact that it is full of talented artists who are definitely thinking outside of the box. “Our place is indeed a tiny place, but it is full of things that are not seen, but rather felt.”, its founders said.
Mohamed ‘PESKO’ Soudani and Taher ‘KERO’ Abid, the duo behind all of this, the two artists who carried the fresh idea of this collective and made it sure for the movement to grow. They were both graffiti writers doing individual works since 2013. Since their meeting in 2014, they started focusing more on teamwork. They made their first tour in 2015 visiting various places in Tunisia like Hammamet, Sousse and Monastir. They spend more and more time putting passion and hard work into creating street art along the way till the end of 2017, when they had the idea of el Hokka.
They started this collective with the goal of gathering “every young artist in sfax who makes art or has a special conception of the world that he or she wants to share with others who believe in other people and understand them.”
“el Hokka is certainly a project in progress.”
The members of this new creative collective are always looking forward for meeting new artists through the work they do. “We are encouraging people to join us by sharing our work, our art and our progress.”
“Work is key.” All of el Hokka members are contributing to the progress of its growing. They are constantly trying to evolve new ideas and bring acts into the Tunisian communities, especially in Sfax. Kero and Pesko consider that people are an important part of their project as put more focus on leaving a positive impact on them by organizing events such as workshops, talk sessions, project documents and organizing debates. “We invest in people and we believe in them.”
el Hokka aspire to be a role model, a role model of positivity, teamwork, and especially, creativity. It is true that they are now based in Sfax and putting more focus on bringing attention there, but they intend to expand outside of the city too and spread their work all over the Tunisian country. “El Hokka needs to flourish and expand first. It needs to gain a strong foundation in Sfax for it to spread somewhere else.”
If you are ever interested in joining el Hokka, just “get up, get into and get involved!”
Everyone is welcome to join us. All you have to do is come and say hi! We want everyone to know that our country is full of potential artists who are capable of seeing beauty and making art.
– el Hokka’s founders.
el Hokka‘s main next step is organizing their one year anniversary where they intent to bring the Tunisian creative artists together and meet with them.
It would be really such a great event and we will make sure that it reaches everybody!
Well, this is it for today, we hope you enjoyed this read and we will sure meet in next week’s blog! Till then, keep it fresh!
Check their Instagram profile: @el_hokka