Mogadishu, Somalia — HIS T-shirts read "Beautiful Mogadishu," with a hand-painted background of a Somali flag or a camel. Foreigners in this wasted capital buy them as souvenirs, chuckling at the irony. But the man behind the shirt isn't laughing.
They call him Happy Arts, and the Mogadishu-born artist said he uses his craft to spread hope in a city that has seen little.
"I paint to show people another time, so they will remember Mogadishu was once beautiful," said the 30-year-old artist, whose real name is Abdulkhadir Aweys Abdi.
In the front of his tiny shop are oil paintings of cheerful scenes. Bucking impalas, children playing or smiling women. Sales are sparse, he said, because few people these days have money to splurge. But for years, he has supported a wife and nine children by peddling hand-painted T-shirts, commercial signposts and the occasional portrait.
Hidden in the back of the tin-roofed shack are a collection of darker creations he painted secretly over the years. After some nudging, he agreed to dig out the large canvases. They depict a far different Somalia, one of civil war and starvation, street fights and drowning refugees. His technique is coarse, the message overt.
They are his passion and his pride. One painting shows a collage of scenes from Somalia's recent past, from the artillery attack that destroyed the parliament building to bloodied bodies from a clan war. In the center of the piece is a woman's anguished gaze, tears streaming down her face.
He refuses to sell these darker pieces. He said he's saving them for history, for an exhibition he dreams of holding after Mogadishu's problems end.
"This is the civil war," he said, motioning to the work. "I'm keeping a record."
Happy is a short man, about 5 foot 4, with a round belly and fat cheeks. He and his studio smell faintly of fresh-baked bread, suggesting baker more than painter.
By age 10 he was studying with a local artist. When he was 15, the military dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre collapsed and Somalia began a 16-year plunge into violence, clan war and lawlessness. Happy never finished high school.
As an artist, the suffering has been inspirational, he said. In the early days of the civil war, Happy's secret paintings reflected the gritty reality he was witnessing. As a Somali, however, it's been too painful to watch. Now he paints what he remembers, or what people describe to him, because he can no longer bear to see the decline of his beloved city.
