ASHWAN

About Ashwan

Ashwan is a British contemporary artist born in Liverpool in 1971 who now lives and works in Barcelona. His artistic practice has deep roots in hip-hop culture, graffiti, music and the visual language of the city.

Long before developing his current studio practice, Ashwan was involved with graffiti, b-boy culture, DJing and music production. Hip-hop remains one of the strongest influences in his work and continues to shape both the rhythm and structure of his compositions.

Ashwan studied Fine Art in the United Kingdom before completing an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work moves between painting, sculptural relief, lettering and mixed media, bringing together influences from urban culture and contemporary art.

One of the most distinctive elements of Ashwan's practice is his use of discarded cardboard. Used boxes are cut, layered, painted and transformed into large-scale works that move between two and three dimensions.

This transformation of an overlooked material into an artwork is central to the meaning of the work. Cardboard carries signs of use, transport and everyday life, while the finished pieces give the material a new identity and permanence.

Lettering plays an equally important role. Ashwan often compresses words and phrases into dense visual structures, sometimes drawing directly from rap lyrics. Positive and negative spaces create a visual rhythm that echoes the cadence and energy of hip-hop.

Some of these text-based works have also moved outside the gallery. Ashwan has installed lettering pieces directly in Barcelona's urban environment, allowing the work to interact with walls, streets and the constantly changing visual surface of the city.

His more recent works explore layered and distressed surfaces that resemble the accumulation of paint, posters and graffiti found on city walls. These pieces combine rough textures with materials such as metallic leaf, creating a contrast between discarded surfaces and refined finishes.

Ashwan's work has been exhibited internationally and continues to connect contemporary painting and object-making with the history, sound and improvisational energy of hip-hop and urban culture.

Urban Arts News presents selected Instagram posts and works by Ashwan, documenting another distinctive voice within Barcelona's contemporary urban-art scene.