Scimitar

Born in Beirut in the late 1970s, Tarek Dem came of age against a backdrop of conflict and chaos. Confined indoors during the war years, he built his own creative universe — Lego, drawing, fantasised weapons and war machines.

From an early age, the pages of Métal Hurlant became a portal to another world — Moebius, Druillet, Caza and Juan Giménez feeding a visual imagination that was already hungry for the dark, the fantastical and the extreme. These were the seeds of an obsessive visual language that would define his work for decades.

In 1989 he moved to Paris, plunging into graffiti in his early teens. At 13, he bought his first record solely based on the cover — Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast — a moment that crystallised a lifelong fascination with the dark, fantastical imagery of metal album art. Paris opened the doors to a whole wider visual universe that had been out of reach in Lebanon — one he consumed voraciously and made entirely his own.

Now 48, his practice spans graffiti, painting, installation and tattooing. He pushes a subject to its limits, until it becomes automatic — then abandons it. Like an album played too many times, he sets it aside, only to rediscover it years later with fresh eyes. Restless, prolific and allergic to repetition.

Since 2015, tattooing has become a central pillar of his practice. A discipline he had long been fascinated by, finally pursued — and one where all his influences converge. A craft governed by collaboration and client vision, it operates under different rules to his painting, and he embraces that tension.

Dark, unpredictable and impossible to categorise, Tarek remains one of the most singular voices to emerge from the collision of street culture, comic mythology and fine art.