ending the use of hieroglyphic script. In the subsequent centuries, Egypt was further conquered by the Arabs, the Ottomans, the French and the British. 21st-Century Creativity Since shaking off the shackles of colonialism in the 1950s, Egypt has used art as an avenue of finding its identity, reckoning with national political and religious issues, and seeking greater freedom. Street art saw a meteoric rise during the 2011 Arab Spring protests and their aftermath as ‘artivism’ and a way to express ideas without government censorship. Many pieces had unfiltered political commentary or were portraits of people who had been killed by police and government security forces. The centre of the uprising in Cairo was Tahrir Square, and the nearby street of Mohamed Mahmoud became something of an open-air art gallery. Famous pieces included Ganzeer’s Martyr Murals, Omar Fathy’s Illi Kalif Ma Matsh (‘The one who delegates doesn't die’), a painting of deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, who became the de facto head of state after Mubarak’s ouster, as two sides of the same face, and Alaa Awad’s Marching Women, painted in a neo-pharaonic style with rows of women holding papyrus scrolls of knowledge and other female figures climbing a ladder that symbolises the revolution. However, laws enacted since the uprising have quashed street art in the capital, and the vibrant
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murals have been scrubbed away, painted over or demolished, living on only in books and blogs. Both famous pieces mentioned above were removed in 2012, and though street artists came back with tongue-in-cheek tags (‘Congratulations on the new paint’), today many of them fear arrest, imprisonment or worse. The most iconic large-scale work in Cairo now is Perception by French-Tunisian ‘calligraffiti’ artist El Seed, who blends Arabic calligraphy with street art. The piece shares an important but different message. It’s painted across 50 buildings in the neglected neighbourhood of Manshiyat Nasr, derided as ‘Garbage City’ for the community of informal rubbish collectors who live here. The artwork is visible as a whole only from a specific viewpoint on Mokattam Mountain in this district, and the scrawled words are from the Coptic Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, who said, ‘Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first’. Cairo’s contemporary galleries channel this lively, youthful spirit. In the upscale Nile-side district of Garden City, the dynamic Medrar for Contemporary Art often showcases work by young, boundary-pushing Egyptian artists. The Nile island of Zamalek also has a particularly dense concentration of galleries. Seek out vibrant paintings at the family-run Picasso Art Gallery, see the latest creations at Ubuntu and discover the up-and-coming names of the Egyptian art world at Safarkhan.
