One word across 85 rooftops.
Operation Salam is a large-scale public-art intervention created by Lebanese street-art collective ASHEKMAN in Tripoli. Across rooftops between Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen, the Arabic word سلام, Salam, peace was built at the scale of a neighborhood.
Seen from the street, the work exists as individual roofs, buildings and people. Seen from above, those fragments become one image.
Not a mural on the city. A message made from the city.
The city became the typography.
ASHEKMAN transformed 85 rooftops across roughly 1.3 km of Syria Street into a single Kufic composition. Local residents, children and families became part of the process, turning the work into something built with the neighborhood rather than placed onto it.
The power of the intervention comes from perspective. Up close, every rooftop keeps its own identity. From the air, they connect.
Helping the idea travel beyond the rooftops.
The film and case-study material around Operation Salam became a second life for the project. Nassif Al Rayess worked across the editing and post-production of that material, helping shape the scale, process and human dimension of the intervention into a story that could move beyond Tripoli.
The role of film was not to replace the artwork. It was to preserve the experience of it, clarify what could only be understood from above, and carry the idea to audiences who would never stand on those rooftops themselves.
The artwork belonged to the place. Film helped the meaning move.
Why it belongs in the Spred story.
Operation Salam is a reminder that strong visual communication does not always begin with a camera. Sometimes the camera arrives after the idea already exists, and the responsibility is to understand it well enough to help it travel.
Public art changed the view from above. Film helped the idea reach further.
