Cairo artists take creative energy to the streets
Cairo's thriving art scene
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Egypt's revolution in 2011 has given birth to an explosion of new creativity, especially street art
- Street art has existed in Cairo before the revolution, albeit furtive and hardly visible
- Artists and curators are hoping to foster the country's burgeoning creativity
Editor's note: Follow the Inside the Middle East team on Instagram. Seen some great street art in Egypt? Send us your photos and iReports.
(CNN) -- Egypt's revolution in 2011 gave birth to an explosion of new creativity, especially street art.
No longer confined to
exhibit their works in galleries, more and more artists are turning
humble streets into open-air studios and outdoor museums. Their canvas
of choice is a bare, dusty wall on which they spray cheeky graffiti and
paint colorful murals.
"Graffiti is a form of art, one of the ways of expression," said Ahmed Al-Attar, playwright and artistic director of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival.
"It's kind of making a
statement, that the public space is for everyone. It's for walking, it's
for sitting down, it's for demonstrating. It's for art."
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Street art has existed in
Cairo before the revolution, albeit furtive and hardly visible.
Graffiti or posters would pop up on some streets, but they usually soon
disappeared, painted over or torn up. Street artists were chased away by
police, or worse arrested.
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During the 2011 uprising,
activist artists created graffiti and murals as a form of non-violent
protest. Now, in post-revolution Cairo, street art is spreading. Murals
and graffiti stencils appear even in an affluent neighborhood like
Zamalek, instead of hidden alleyways. Some of the artworks are
emotionally charged, expressing social anger, political frustration or
paying tribute to fallen protesters.
It's kind of making a statement, that the public space is for everyone.
Ahmed al-Attar
Ahmed al-Attar
In a reflection of their
newly elevated status, graffiti artists get commissions from art
galleries. But they or their works still risk being targeted, especially
by the powerful army and its supporters.
Ganzeer, possibly
Egypt's most famous street artist, was briefly arrested in May 2011,
months after the revolution, over a poster criticizing the military's
repression of freedom.
After the army removed
President Mohamed Morsi from power in July 2013, passers-by ripped off
many of sculptor Alaa Abdel Hameed's eagle sculptures, inspired by the
military's insignia, that were plastered upside down because the
artworks were seen as an insult to the armed forces.
Art plays a crucial role
in times of political and social change, said Al-Attar, who founded and
runs Studio Emad Eddin, a rehearsal space for performing artists in
Cairo. "For me, it's one of the important factors that led to change."
Under the Mubarak regime, the prevalent sense of fear had a paralyzing effect on people's self-expression.
But, "once they realized
there's nothing really to fear, they started to go back to their old
ways of expressing themselves," said Al-Attar, "drawing on walls,
singing in streets, you know, going back to the public space."
The Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival is trying to encourage more creative expression.
"Egypt has a big
heritage when it comes to art and culture," says Al-Altar. "And that is
one of the reasons that trying to tame that society doesn't really work.
It's a society that likes to dance and sing and eat and be outside, and
that's part of it."
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