DAL was born in China in 1984 and now lives in South Africa and all round the world. His art is boundaries free and gives a sense of freedom and beauty to me. Moreover a question pops in my mind: what is really real? Enjoy the portrait he did for Woodenleg and his answers to my questions.
What is the story of Dal (the artist) so far? And what is the story of Dal (the human being) indeed?
The artist DAL is busy building a reality which can help the human DAL growing up to maturity.
It seems animals are your favorite subjects, did you asked yourself the reason why?
Yes, I like painting different subjects and animals often appear in my works. I love animals as they bring this world more vitality and show the onlooker the condition of our planet Earth. It is so hard to see them around in our daily life now. You may feel cold and sad landing on a planet which only have just one kind of creature with its machines; hence painting animals is a carrier to share my mind and memento. We may born as an animal again, who knows.
[Abscission for POW WOW 2013 - photo by Brandon Shigeta]
You travelled a lot, what are your strongest memory (good and bad)?
All the travels are fantastic, each of them has different scenery and feature. The pain is always from the long flight sitting.
Moreover, I guess you have an idea about the direction our poor planet earth is moving, where are all we going according to you?
I believe a new age is coming as humans start to realize the malaise of materialism and the irrational system connected. We don’t have choice to ignore it. You must realize that you are bleeding before the excessive blood loss. All the lies and control will fall apart by then, that’s how we will heal.
What is the biggest dream of an urban artist?
My biggest dream is not to be classified, but trying to be a nice human being.
In a lot of science fiction stories human beings overcome the division in nation and racial issues, do you think it will ever happen?
I think it is happening if we look back the history. Fiction come from aspiration, aspiration promote the action. We just need to get better.
Usually metal is heavy, your murals are “light” instead. I mean, they really seem to move. Is taking things form a different point of view your secret?
I think the ‘metal’ or ‘wire’ are the delusion and wonderful misunderstanding for my work. That’s the question I put up on the wall－ What is the real essence? And what are you looking at? I could say that’s few layers of paint. I just take charge of encode, I leave it to the viewer to complete image formation.
My secret is: I never want to inform things directly, that’s my game 
thanks.
