Said Dokins (Mexico, 1983) Lives and Works in Mexico City. He started doing graffiti and street interventions since the 90s. This experience led him to the School of Arts, where he was interested in conceptual art and the relation between art and writing. He did some studies of Philosophy and Art Theory. He has also done courses of traditional Western and Japanese calligraphy.
Dokins has been honored with the Iberoamerican Award to Contemporary Artistic Creation Cortes de Cádiz, “Juan Luis Vasallo” 2015.
Dokins explores formally, symbolically and philosophically the potentiality of words and letters. In his work, they become gestures, traces that overlap creating patterns, textures, narratives; marks that carve sites, drawing boundaries, producing meaning. In that sense, for Dokins calligraphy and graffiti are a way to understand our relations with language, an action that stresses time, space and memory, a political enunciation. His artistic practice involves several disciplines and media such as calligraphy, graffiti, installation, performance and video art, among others.
Dokins has won international attention for his monumental murals and for his unique calligraphic style, which combines elements from Western and Asian Calligraphic Traditions, with pre-phonetic writing references, Mesoamerican Pre-Hispanic symbolic inheritance and Graffiti writing, combining precision and discipline with expressiveness and spontaneity. Through his deep vibrant and compositions Dokins arises reflections about writing as an act of inscription and memory, addressing social and political issues.
His concern about light that has lead him to experiment with various technologies and media, including Virtual Reality, through Tilt Brush a App he explored in the Google Cultural Institute in Paris. Another recent example is his project Heliographies of Memory (2014-2022), which examines the different levels in which inscriptions operate through light calligraphy actions performed in symbolically charged places, capturing the action of writing with long exposure photography: invisible inscriptions of light resignifying the space they cross.
His work has been published in noted books and magazines, like Re_form, OSTRALE Biennale of Dresden Catalogue, The Art of Writing your Name, The Art of Rebellion, third and fourth volumes, or Letter Arts Review, a renowned calligraphy publication. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, in countries as Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom, France, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, Peru and others.
Said Dokins has been included in Forbes Magazine Mexico Top 100 Most Creative Mexicans in the World list as a recognition of his remarkable work.
