French artist Thomas Lelu on using social media to help his art send a message
Rather than paintings and sculptures, French contemporary artist Thomas Lelu uses words to communicate his art. Lelu, whose work mixes elements of graffiti and the strength of words, describes his work as a combination of language and pictures – something that is "imperfect but balanced". His latest exhibition, Calm Down It's Just Art, is currently at the Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Dubai and features canvases on which he has spray-painted phrases. Lelu, who has been painting since 2003, says he chose to focus on words after receiving advice from his mother, a psychoanalyst. 'She said to me, 'People are about language. This is the essence of the human being,'' he tells The National. He also uses social media to display his art, often using a ballpoint pen to write on paper and sharing the work on Instagram. His current style was developed during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he shared his feelings through notes on social media. 'This moment was difficult for everyone,' he says. 'So, I chose to open up about what I was experiencing and that became the beginning of a new dimension in my process and my work.' Lelu began posting on his Instagram account once a week and soon noticed his work being widely shared. 'When I write something, I first post it on another account, one that doesn't have too many followers," he says. "I experiment there, seeing how these words resonate with a smaller group. If it's successful, then I post it on my official account. 'After that, many people repost the text. Some even use it for tattoos, wallpapers and other personal projects. Sometimes, I repost the pictures they create using my words and, in doing so, I rediscover my own text in a completely new way. So you see, it's really a collaboration with people from the very beginning.' He says his show in Dubai represents a natural progression, after having his works published in a book. He believes the use of spray paint on large canvases sends a big message. His work is "not exactly graffiti, and I'm not a street artist," he says, in fact it is "more about the spirit of a protest, where you're claiming a message and saying something important". While many artists use social media to publicise their art, Lelu views it as an integral part of his work. He says he joined Instagram early on, after the platform was recommended by a friend. 'For me, that's one of the most important parts of my work," he adds. "It's funny because, at first, I was using something like MySpace and one day I was at a fashion show with a friend, a philosopher who is quite famous in France. I was using my phone with a very bad filter and he said to me, 'You should try Instagram.' "So I did, and that was really the beginning of the work I do today. It was a recommendation from a friend who happens to be a specialist in language, which makes it even more interesting.' Lelu describes Instagram as a big factory, where strangers interact with each other on a daily basis. 'I don't want to work in a studio just painting things with a glass of wine and some jazz playing – even though I love jazz,' he says. The most important thing is talking to people, he says. 'That's what my work is about. It's about language, yes, but also about meeting people, having conversations and changing – both myself and others. It's not just about the medium, it's about a social connection.' Thomas Lelu: Calm Down It's Just Art is at Zidoun-Bossuyt Gallery in Dubai until June 14
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But Forsyth's hurricane-paced thriller complete with journalistic-style detail and brutal sub-plots of lust, betrayal and murder was an instant hit. The once poor journalist became a wealthy writer of fiction. "I never intended to be a writer at all," Forsyth later wrote in his memoir, The Outsider - My Life in Intrigue. "After all, writers are odd creatures, and if they try to make a living at it, even more so." So influential was the novel that Venezuelan militant revolutionary Illich Ramirez Sanchez, was dubbed 'Carlos the Jackal'. Forsyth presented himself as a cross between Ernest Hemingway and John le Carre - both action man and Cold War spy - but delighted in turning around the insult that he was a literary lightweight. "I am lightweight but popular. My books sell," he once said. His books, fantastical plots that almost rejoiced in the cynicism of an underworld of spies, criminals, hackers and killers, sold more than 75 million copies. 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He left Reuters for the BBC but soon became disillusioned by its bureaucracy and what he saw as the corporation's failure to cover Nigeria properly due to the government's incompetent post-colonial views on Africa. It was in 1968 that Forsyth was approached by the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, and asked by an officer named "Ronnie" to inform on what was really going on in Biafra. By his own account, he would keep contacts with the MI6, which he called "the Firm", for many years. His novels showed extensive knowledge of the world of spies and he even edited out bits of The Fourth Protocol (1984), he said, so that militants would not know how to detonate an atomic bomb. His writing was sometimes cruel, such as when the Jackal kills his lover after she discovers he is an assassin. "He looked down at her, and for the first time she noticed that the grey flecks in his eyes had spread and clouded over the whole expression, which had become dead and lifeless like a machine staring down at her." After finally finding a publisher for The Day of the Jackal, he was offered a three-novel contract by Harold Harris of Hutchinson. Next came The Odessa File in 1972, the story of a young German freelance journalist who tries to track down SS man Eduard Roschmann, or The Butcher of Riga. After that, The Dogs of War in 1974 is about a group of white mercenaries hired by a British mining magnate to kill the mad dictator of an African republic - based on Equatorial Guinea's Francisco Macias Nguema - and replace him with a puppet. The New York Times said at the time that the novel was "pitched at the level of a suburban Saturday night movie audience" and that it was "informed with a kind of post‐imperial condescension toward the black man". Divorced from Carole Cunningham in 1988, he married Sandy Molloy in 1994. But he lost a fortune in an investment scam and had to write more novels to support himself. He had two sons - Stuart and Shane - with his first wife. His later novels variously cast hackers, Russians, Al Qaeda militants and cocaine smugglers against the forces of good - broadly Britain and the West. But the novels never quite reached the level of the Jackal. A supporter of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, Forsyth scolded Britain's elites for what he cast as their treachery and naivety. In columns for The Daily Express, he gave a host of withering assessments of the modern world from an intellectual right-wing perspective. The world, he said, worried too much about "the oriental pandemic" (known to most as COVID-19), Donald Trump was "deranged", Vladimir Putin "a tyrant" and "liberal luvvies of the West" were wrong on most things. He was, to the end, a reporter who wrote novels. "In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached," he wrote. "It is our job to hold power to account."
