ROCKO'S ART

Naoufal "Rocko" Alaoui is a Moroccan-born and Brooklyn-based calligraphy artist whose work has been making it on many New York City walls and in galleries over the last few years. His style attempts to fuse together ancient Arabic scripts with modern western typography strokes.

Born and raised between Morocco and Brooklyn, Naoufal "Rocko" Alaoui spent much of his life in the Spanish city of Andalusia. He was inspired by the historical-cultural amalgamations embedded in the city's streets, culture, and art. Moreover, it was here that he was first introduced to the artistic combinations of Western and Eastern civilizations. These combinations were engraved into the city's culture due to its historic place as the center of Western and Eastern civilization during different historical periods.

Rocko x Zimer - mural in New York

Naoufal "Rocko" Alaoui was just four years old when he learned how to write Arabic calligraphy. Since then, he has evolved the artistic style into his signature visual aesthetic. Early in his life, his passion for art and calligraphy led him to design calligraphic works for tattoos, logos, wall artworks, and clothing lines. While he represents a cultural meeting point as an artist, he also embodies this persona as an individual, evidenced by his fluent Arabic, French, Spanish, and English.

Later in his life, he permanently moved to New York City, where he immediately immersed himself in the Brooklyn street art scene. This led him to partake in multiple artistic collaborations with some big names in the Brooklyn street art culture, including Eelco, N Carlos J, and Zimer.

Rock - Olive Valley, Bushwick

Together with N Carlos J, Rocko co-curated a group show titled 'Brooklyn is the Future'. The two invited over 40 artists for the exhibition, including muralists, street artists, and a few graffiti artists.

In 2017, Rocko found himself at the center of a public feud. It all started when the collaborative mural he had done with Zimer, called The Notorious B.I.G mural, was to be taken down by the building owner on which the mural had been painted. Bent on preserving the icon, Rocko offered the building owner $5000 not to destroy the mural during renovations. However, the owner came back with a counter-offer that Rocko was unable to afford.

Naoufal 'Rocko' Alaoui and Scott 'Zimer' Zimmerman’s mural of late rapper Christopher 'Notorious B.I.G.' Wallace in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York

Eventually, Rocko resigned himself to the fate of his beloved mural and informed his fans about the upcoming overhaul. Soon after, this announcement created a public outcry as fans got behind Rocko to support the preservation of his mural. The story began to gain traction as a part of the larger discourse in New York City on gentrification, which brought with it the important questions of class and race.

At the center of the public feud, Rocko eventually resigned himself to the mural overhaul and asked for the public petition surrounding the mural's preservation to be canceled. Many fans then turned on Rocko for acquiescing. However, many more fans gained a newfound respect for the artist, whose central aim was not to get involved in a public feud but to create art that would inspire peace, collaboration, and community amongst people of different backgrounds.