In the path of Contemporary Art WRITING

About

Said Dokins

Dokins is a visual artist, designer, and researcher known for his multidisciplinary approach that includes curatorial projects, cultural management, and particularly artistic production and research across various disciplines such as drawings, paintings, installations, public space interventions, performance, video art, design, and photography.

Dokins studied Arts at the National School of Plastic Arts at UNAM, where he honed his skills and theoretical knowledge. His artistic focus is on the visual understanding of environments through textual elements, exploring the dynamics of writing in public spaces and its interactions with urban settings, politics, and architecture.

His work has been prominently displayed in both the public sphere and esteemed venues such as the Grand Palais Immersif in Paris, France during the ‘Loading. Urban Art in the Digital Age’ exhibition and the Sixth Calligraphy Biennale in Sharjah Art Museum, UAE.

Nationally, Dokins has made significant contributions to the cultural landscape as the founder and president of the Sociedad Dokins for New Artistic Practices A.C., an organization dedicated to social work in the cultural sector. This initiative aims to expand the art field through new mediums and to connect different social sectors, using art as a central thread to engage diverse communities, including marginalized groups with limited economic and cultural resources.

Currently, Dokins is actively involved in merging urban art with science and technology. His latest collaborations include projects in 2023 with the Science Gallery and the Art Science and Technology Laboratory at the Tecnológico de Monterrey campus Querétaro.

STATEMENT

My work explores the power, relevance, subtlety, and shade of writing as a political act, as well as the existing power relations in the textual exchange through language elements as signs and symbols.

The main theme of my murals, graffiti, installations and site-specific projects is the displacement of the linguistic sign in multiple aesthetic possibilities through the act of writing in relation to time, context, and history.

In my projects, I explore the obsolescence of public spaces, the ephemeral nature of language as well as the hyperbolic and poetic-politic nature of the act of writing.

Highlights

Resume

Selected

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2025: Inscripciones. Laboratorio de Arte Alameda, Mexico City, Mexico

2024: Heliographies Of Memory, Sharjah Art Museum, Sixth Calligraphy Biennale, UAE.

2023: Bio-Reescrituras, Science Gallery, Feria Internacional del Libro de Monterrey, Mexico.

Quirografías, Nodo Estudio Visual Galería, Oaxaca, Mexico.

2023: Open Portfolio, Art Latinou Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico.

2022: Community, Leap Fine Art Print Studio, Vienna, Austria.

2021: Ghosting Write Prophesy, Gatehouse Dalt Vila, Ibiza, Spain.

Sacred Places, Art Latinou Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico.

2019: Runuway Writings, Centro de las Artes, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2025: Al borde de la noche. Casa Milán Gallery. Mexico

2023: LOADING. L’art urbain à l’ère numérique, Grand Palais Immersif – GPI, Paris, France. [Catalogue]

Atentar desde los códigos, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Querétaro -MACQ, Mexico.

2022: Atentar desde los códigos, Museo Urbano Interactivo – MUI, Puebla Mexico.

Cartografías del encierro, Museo Antropológico y de Arte Contemporáneo – MAAC. Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Grabado en el ambiente, Museo del Palacio de Medicina, Mexico City.

WEARABLE, Mirus Gallery San Francisco and Denver, USA.

One by One, ABV Gallery, Atlanta, USA.

2020: U N B O R D E R, Unruly Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

AWARDS:

2025: Grant, Fomento a proyectos y coinversiones culturales. Convocatoria 2024, Secretaría de Cultura. Mexico.

2023: Grant, Fondo Creativo de Arte, Ciencia y Tecnología. Laboratorio Arte AC. Tec de Monterrey, Mexico.

RESIDENCIES

2024: Sharjah Art Museum, Sixth Calligraphy Biennale. One month’s residence for Heliographies Of Memory project. UAE.

2022: Art Science & Technologies. ACT Lab. Artist in Residencie, Tec de Monterrey, Querétaro, Mexico

PRESS & PUBLICATIONS

-Cascone, Vincenzo, BITUME. Fundazione Federico II, Palermo, Italia. 2023.

-Arvide Cynthia, Muros Somos. 33 murales con historia. Mexico, 2022. pp. 121, 122, 126. 2022.

CURATORIAL WORK

2025: Constelaciones urbanas. Secretaría de cultura de Nuevo León. Mexico [Curator]

2020: Look. From the Other Side. Overview of Circus and Urban Art in Mexico, CircoStrada México – France.

Mexico City [Member of the Curatorial and Editorial Committee, Visual Coordinator]

–Callegenera International Urban Art Festival, CONARTE, Monterrey [Member of Curatorial Committee]

Hot of the

Press

The word ´nærhet´ is spelled using the names and words of the individuals Dokins interviewed during his time in Stavanger and is painted in the artist´s trademark calligraphic style – which combines Japanese calligraphy with pre-phonetic Mexican notation.

Dokins is considered to be one of the leading international artists specializing in urban calligraphy. His latest presentation entitled “Runaway Writings” (Escrituras en fuga) features archival and unseen artworks spanning works on paper, on canvas, installations, video, light, and photography.

Created by calligraphy and graffiti artist, Said Dokins, these giant light installations capture calligraphic gestures at the very moment when the action of inscription takes place. Have you ever written your name with a sparkler? Think along those lines, but on a much larger scale.

Said Dokins found a way to capture the essence of the localities in its streets” encapsulating each place’s “Problems and trends, through a visual reinterpretation of words on large murals from a calligraphy that combines styles from around the world.