Yehia Moldan was already experimenting with letters before he knew how to write. Now, Yehia builds a visual language from Arabic letters — designing tattoos, type, and symbols he calls an alien version of Arabic. Each letter is reinterpreted through its form rather than its function, creating something that sits between typography, symbol, and personal script.

Yehia has lived across Gaza, Sweden, Tunisia, and Berlin, and each place left a mark on the work. The isolation of Sweden pushed him inward and toward the page. Tunisia reconnected him with Arabic in a different cultural register. Berlin was the first move he made out of joy rather than necessity. All of it shows up in what he makes.

Over the past few years, his work has grown beyond tattoo design into AI-generated editorial imagery, while exploring the same ideas that define his practice: tension between opposites — tradition and absurdity, tragedy and comedy, right and wrong, colour and black-and-white.

We sat down with Yehia to talk about all of it — the moves, the isolation, what it means to watch Arabic shrink itself to fit spaces built for other languages, and why vulnerability is what he keeps returning to in his work.

— Yehia, six years ago, in an interview, you described yourself as a writer and a graphic designer. Now, in 2026, how do you define yourself?

— I would say I still see myself as a designer, but lately I have been moving more into image-making and storytelling.

— And what about calling yourself an artist?

— For a long time, I tried to avoid calling myself an artist because I didn’t really connect with the attitude that often comes with the art world. But lately, that has started to change.

As I have moved beyond purely visual media and started exploring language and visual systems more broadly — beyond just digital forms — I have begun to feel more comfortable identifying as an artist.

— How did it all start for you — your interest in design and in letters?

— The whole journey started when I was eight years old, in third grade, when I participated in my first Arabic typography competition. Honestly, I only joined because my mom forced me to. She was my teacher, and I was studying at the same school where she taught, so I didn’t really have a choice. I ended up doing badly on purpose because I hated it and didn’t want to participate

But I think my mom was the first person to recognise something in me, even if the way it started wasn’t ideal.

My father was an Arabic teacher. He would always sing and recite lines from thousand-year-old poems. So, the Arabic language in general has always been a huge part of my life, directly influenced by both Baba and Mamo.

In our family, we are all good writers. We all have very recognisable handwriting. And I think part of that came from my mom teaching me during those early school years, which really shaped me.

Also, when I was three or four years old, my mom used to take me to school with her because she couldn’t leave me at home. Apparently, I would copy the shapes of what she was writing without even understanding what I was doing. So, in a way, I started writing before I actually knew how to write.

— And in the end, despite resisting it at the beginning, you still became a designer. Were your parents okay with that? We all know that, especially for boys in the region, there is often an expectation to follow more traditional career paths.

— It was bad — very bad. My brothers both went into respected professions: one became a doctor and the other a pharmacist. There was an expectation that I would follow a similar path. But I always had a difficult relationship with authority. Not with my family themselves, but with the idea of authority in general. That was the real conflict.

I struggled in school and ended up with very low grades, too low to get into the colleges my family had hoped for me. My mother was especially disappointed.

I think that sense of contradiction stayed with me and eventually became part of my work. Even now, I am constantly drawn to opposites and tension — tradition and absurdity, tragedy and comedy, right and wrong, colour and black-and-white. There is always this duality present, and I think it is something you can clearly see reflected in what I create.

— You have moved between countries a lot — from Gaza to Egypt, then Sweden, Tunis, Berlin, Cairo. Do you think these movements influenced your visual language? And if so, how can we see that reflected in your work?

— Sweden was really where everything started for me, and I think it came out of isolation. It came from feeling alienated within society. I actually had a good social life there, honestly, but that feeling of alienation was always present in the background. Eventually, it pushed me into a period of isolation, and that is where a lot of the work began.

You can clearly see that feeling reflected in what I create. What I do with Arabic isn’t traditional Arabic calligraphy at all. It is almost like an alien version of Arabic — an interpretation of letters rather than a readable language. I have never been very interested in readability itself. I don’t think everything needs to be immediately understood.

Living in a society that didn’t understand Arabic pushed me to create something that exists somewhere in between languages. I am thinking about this with you now — I didn’t consciously plan it that way at the time — but looking back, I can see how much those experiences shaped the work.

I was also heavily influenced by Viking symbolism while living in Sweden. Sometimes inspiration stayed with me in very small ways. I remember once seeing a tattoo on someone during a night out, and I kept thinking about it for years. At that point, I didn’t yet have the tools or the visual language to express those ideas, but something about it stayed with me.

When I moved to Tunisia, I suddenly found myself back in an Arabic environment again, but in a completely different cultural context. There I encountered Amazigh typography, which felt surprisingly close to what I was already exploring visually. I was deeply influenced by it as well.

Over time, all of these influences merged into a modern interpretation of the ancient — a contemporary visual language carrying traces of older symbols, histories, and forms.

— You once said that today there is a “romantic and reasonable Moldan,” whereas back then there was a “vulnerable and fragile Moldan.” What did you mean by that? What was happening to you during that time?

— I grew up feeling, in one way or another, that Gaza was a kind of prison. I felt like the world outside existed somewhere beyond my reach, and I knew very little about it. So when I finally left, I felt extremely fragile and uncertain. I looked at other people as if they understood something I didn’t. It became a period of observation — feeling disconnected, vulnerable, and trying to understand how to exist in a completely different environment.

Part of that difficulty was also practical. I didn’t speak English, and I didn’t speak Swedish either, so connecting with people was genuinely hard. Not necessarily emotionally heavy, but difficult in terms of communication and finding a sense of belonging.

Moving to Tunisia changed something for me. It helped me reconnect with myself and with the kind of life I actually wanted to live. I began enjoying what I was doing again, creatively and personally.

Then came Berlin, and Berlin was a very different energy altogether. By that point, the move was no longer driven by escape or survival. I chose Berlin out of joy. I chose it because I wanted freedom, fun, movement, music, and life. It felt like the first time I allowed myself to simply enjoy things.

— About five years ago, you created the project — the Arabic version of Vogue. Why did you decide to make it, and what were you trying to express through it?

— I kept asking myself why Arabic was so often adapted to fit existing structures instead of existing confidently on its own terms. So many magazines, brands, and creative projects in the region still use English names, even when their entire audience is Arabic-speaking. And I kept thinking: why not allow Arabic to exist naturally, playfully, and confidently in contemporary culture?

For me, it wasn’t about making some grand political statement. It was also about having fun and experimenting with the language visually. Why shouldn’t Arabic occupy these spaces too? It felt like a very reasonable question.

I think part of the issue is that we are constantly adapting ourselves to other systems instead of expecting those systems to adapt to us as well. That tension became part of the work.

— Recently, you started posting these incredible AI-generated images, right? Does this feel like a new chapter in your work and artistic practice?

— I don’t really see these practices as separate from one another. For me, they all belong to the same visual language. Typography used to be the central element, but now it exists as one part of a broader visual system alongside styling, editorial work, and image-making.

At some point, I realised tattooing and symbols alone weren’t enough for what I wanted to express emotionally or visually. I wanted to move beyond isolated symbols and create work that could hold atmosphere, contradiction, tension, and narrative all at once.

That is what drew me toward editorial image-making. Not photography in the traditional sense, but constructing entire visual worlds. A lot of it comes from wanting to express the strange tension between tragedy and comedy that exists within the Arab world — and within my own experience too.

AI became interesting to me not because it instantly generates images, but because it expands the process itself. People often imagine it as something random or immediate, but for me, the real work happens in selecting, editing, sequencing, rejecting, rebuilding, and shaping images into a coherent emotional language. The image itself is only one part of the process.

I am also heavily influenced by internet culture and online visual archives. I think that is an important part of my generation visually. We grew up constantly absorbing references, images, symbols, aesthetics, forums, memes, editorials, and visual fragments from everywhere at once. All of that inevitably became part of how I think and create.

— In one of the images, there is a woman in the desert carrying two hearts. Then, we see a man with broken hearts as wings, and after that, a woman with an arrow through her heart. Why does the heart in your work always seem somehow broken?

— I think there is a certain beauty in showing vulnerability. We all carry heartbreak in one way or another, even if we don’t always admit it. And I feel it is important to acknowledge that instead of constantly hiding behind strength.

Of course, I want the work to feel empowering, but at the same time, I also want it to feel human.

— And if we go back to your tattoo designs, are there any pieces that you feel especially connected to?

— I think it is a series based on numbers. I love those designs because they perfectly represent what I am trying to express visually: taking something familiar and using it in a completely different way, creating a language that isn’t immediately readable to everyone.

I am very interested in the idea of coded communication — using your own letters, numbers, and symbols as tools for expression, almost like creating your own form of censorship or protection through visual language. The work becomes understandable only to those who are meant to understand it.

There is also a Palestine-related design that remains very personal to me. I rarely develop an emotional attachment to specific pieces, but that one is different.

— What is your favourite number?

— I have always liked the number seven for some reason. But I am especially fascinated by six and nine because they share the same form, just inverted. I love the simplicity of that — the fact that the exact same shape can become something completely different depending on orientation, and that people naturally understand it without difficulty.

— Once, when someone asked you about your favourite Arabic word, you answered “reflection.” Is that still true today?

— I think now my favourite word is probably shams, which means “sun” in Arabic. It is a word I have designed countless times. Whenever I am bored, experimenting, or trying to challenge myself visually, I return to that word.

I think my relationship with shams began in Sweden, where I was suddenly living without much sunlight. Being away from the sun created a strange emotional connection to it. Around that time, I also met someone named Shams who gave me a book called Awtan al-Arbab (Homelands of the Gods) by Ibrahim al-Koni. He appeared in my life in a very surreal way — almost like a passing figure who arrived, handed me the book, and disappeared again. But that book affected me deeply. I read it obsessively, almost spiritually.

From there, the word stayed with me even more strongly. I named my first cat Shams, too. She was a stray cat, extremely independent, and I loved that about her. She would just appear, steal food, and leave again.

Over time, shams became more than just a word for me. It became a symbol carrying many meanings at once: warmth, excess, light, independence, guidance, and emotional intensity. It is something that keeps reappearing in my life and in my work, almost like a personal visual and emotional anchor.