Artscape Picasso Participants

 

Kamal Musallam & Band

Musallam was born in Kuwait from an artistic family, where he showed unique talents for drawing and playing music from the early age of three. He was active in the musical world throughout his youth and college years. His experience includes paying with Arabic musical bands, flamenco bands, as well as rock and blues bands. During the late 80´´s to the early 90´´s, Musallam started finding out more about Jazz music and enjoyed the work of musical geniuses Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, George Benson, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola, among many others. In 94 Musallam moved to France where he lived for four years during which he discovered new musical genres and deepened his mastery and his passion for music. Currently, Kamal Musallam is based in the UAE where he leads his own band and is an active live music performer and a music producer

Ferenc Cako - Sand Drawing Animator

Ferenc Cako is an outstanding Hungarian, live, sand-animator and an animation-film maker. His live sand animation shows have met great international success. During his performances, he draws figurative representations with sand, to the sound of music, which get projected onto a film screen. His work is unique and has been performed in all corners of the world including Europe, the USA, Japan and Singapore and others. Cako’s first significant international success was at the Annecy Film Festival with AD Astra in 1982. From that time on he has made his films from his own scripts. His films have won many grand prizes at nearly every significant film festival: Cannes (Best Short Film), Berlin (Golden Bear), San Francisco (Golden Gate Award), Annecy (Best Short Film) to name but a few. Cako’s graphic works and paintings are shown in solo exhibitions. He also teaches 3D animation at the School of Applied Arts in Hungary.

Martin Giesen 

Born and schooled in Germany, Martin Giesen studied history of art and architecture at Heidelberg University. He worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and, upon completing a PhD, entered into a career of university teaching with posts held in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Canada and most recently the UAE where he was founding dean of the School of Architecture & Design at the American University of Sharjah. His research interests are in physical and cultural determinants of material culture. Descriptive watercolors have been exhibited in solo exhibits mainly in Lebanon, Canada and the UAE. Two monographs on Giesen’s work by John Munro were published. At present Giesen is Professor of Art History in the Visual and Performing Arts Program at the American University of Sharjah.