Oppression is not a point of view
By Bahia Shehab, Citysharing The streets of Cairo have become an open gallery to many artists wishing to express their views, dreams and hopes for a better Egypt. Artists are using the walls of the city to tell their stories, to lament the death of martyrs and to call for political and social change. Thus each painted wall acquires a life of its
» Read moreFilmed June 2012 Subtitles available in 36 languages Art historian Bahia Shehab has long been fascinated with the Arabic script for ‘no.’ When revolution swept through Egypt in 2011, she began spraying the image in the streets saying no to dictators, no to military rule and no to violence. Interactive transcriptInteractive transcript TED Fellow Bahia Shehab sends an
» Read morePublished on Mar 22, 2013 Egypt’s January 25 revolution helped bring out the best in raw and potent urban arts, most of all in the graffiti scene in Cairo. This short video gives a brief glimpse into the always evolving street art scene that has gone from strength to strength and become a valuable component in the creative resistance
» Read moreAfricaseen blog, 2nd April 2013 by Susan Phillips While Soraya Morayef identifies herself as a writer and journalist, I see her through a different lens, as an artist and archivist. Through her photo blog documenting the extraordinary explosion of street art in Egypt following the initial Tahrir Square protests of January 2011, Morayef has captured, framed, and contextualized a fleeting moment in Egypt’s
» Read more28 March 2013, africaisacountry.com Mickey Mouse is pulling apart a bomb: inside is the torso of George W. Bush, and they’re both looking perfectly happy about the whole thing. Soraya Morayef is taking a photo of the wall where these figures are painted, on a busy street in downtown Cairo, when a man walks up to her and asks her
» Read moreBy Soraya Morayef Open Democracy, 13 November 2013 Many disregard the recurrent stories of prison deaths, police torture and rape because – on the other hand – Egypt’s streets are empty after curfew and the walls are freshly painted; surely a clear indication that the state has succeeded in restoring security and defeating terrorism. On Tuesday November 5, Egypt’s Minister
» Read moreBy Soraya Morayef Jadaliyya, 22 May 2012 Around the corner from Tahrir Square, the heart of Egypt’s eighteen-day uprising, Mohamed Mahmud Street bears the scars of a turbulent political year in Egypt. The once-bustling street off of Tahrir Square has seen its share of violent battlefields–beginning with 28 January 2011 and ending with the February 2012 clashes following the Port
» Read morePreview of Mark Nickolas documentary film Nefertiti’s Daughters, featuring some of the most interesting street artists in Egypt. LOG LINE: Queen Nefertiti returns to join revolutionary street artists on the front lines in the fight for women’s rights and freedom in Egypt. SYNOPSIS: Nefertiti’s Daughters is a story of women, art and revolution. Told by prominent Egyptian artists, this documentary witnesses the
» Read moreEgypt Independent Mohamed Mostafa Egypt’s customs services in Alexandria have seized 400 copies of “Walls of Freedom”, a book depicting Egypt’s street graffitti art in the context of the 2011 uprising, for “instigating revolt,” says the Finance Ministry. Ahmed al-Sayyad, the ministry’s undersecretary, told Al-Masry Al-Youm that the book contains elements that give “advice on confronting police and army forces,”
» Read moreBy Mona Abaza, 25 January 2015 Clearly Cairene graffiti has lost momentum during this year. Having been the faithful barometer of the revolution over the past three years, graffiti has recently faced transmutations and drawbacks that run parallel with the political process of restoring “order” in the street. The heartbreaking story of the recent death of a cheerful and bright
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