by Sherif Awad

My name is Chams El Din Belarbi and my artistic and professional name is Chemsou Belardi.

I was born 1987 in the municipality of Ain Tadlis, Mostaganem province, Algeria. During my childhood and schooldays, I was interested in drawing, rather than mathematics and physics. While coming back from school, I used to pick up newspapers from the road to look at the bright pictures of movie stars, then I went home to try to draw them. My Teachers began to discover my talent, and so I gave more importance to drawing. However, because my parents were very poor, I had to stop studying to pursue handcraft like decorating shops in the middle of harsh streets. I remember being used by some unscrupulous people who absorbed my artistic energy, and did not pay me my work fees. Yet other good people helped me financially and morally.

In the evening, I would go to the cinema halls and see posters and huge pictures of movie stars only to go back home again to draw them. Because we lived under a broken roof and so the rain was falling on our house, many of my artworks realized by semi-primitive tools I can afford like chalk and watercolor were damaged. After many years of trying to break through, I got connected with international film producers to design the artworks of their films. This includes Bucks of America by Aki Aleong: The true story of Black Soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary war from the Boston Massacre to the Battle of Bunker Hill.