When asked about my work in Mohamed Mahmoud Street, I tend to tell people that they shouldn’t look at it from an artistic point of view, but rather as a space for expressing an opinion and delivering a message. Mohamed Mahmoud Street, that graffiti or wall murals are not art, but that theyĪre a form of information and news shared with the people. The mural was drawn following clashes between anti-military protesters and police. A mural near Cairo’s Tahrir Square drawn by Egyptian artists on a concrete wall that blocks entry to the Ministry of Interior headquarters. Especially that the corporation agreed to compromise by not including the brand name in this huge mural for the sake of it to stay there, shows that minds are changing and the culture is moving forward. The idea that they were willing to pay such a huge amount of money for the mural to be used for a couple of seconds in a commercial is something that we consider to be a very positive step.
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Recently, we were asked by a large corporation to paint a twelve floor building for them to include in a TV commercial.
Many shops and restaurants in Cairo today want to use this art in decorating their spaces.
It is important that the culture survives and the mindsets keep changing. Now most of the graffiti artists are creating their art for a commercial audience, which is very good. The political movement diedĪfter 2015, and with it, the street art. There is a new generation now eleven-year-old kidsīack in 2011 are now commercial graffiti artists. Now graffiti artists, and not just politically. Many people from different backgrounds are Photo by Jonathan Rashadĭuring, and after the revolution? And what were the challenges then vs now?Īt the beginning, there was space for a very It did not have to be realistic or flashy to be considered art at first, but later on, as the revolutionary audience diminished, we had to inspire people again by creating larger-than-life art murals. We then had the opportunity to create more.
As I said, at the beginning of the revolution we weren’t creating art, just writing simple messages.
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It did not change in its message, but matured in terms of how to deliver the message and how to reach people. How has your style changed since you first We started to paint murals it became a space where we could showcase our thoughts and opinions. Shortly after they started building barriers on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, we reclaimed this space. For the first year of the revolution, I-along with others-did not consider myself an artist, as we used to write messages on the walls or make very simple stencils. Graffiti has always been interesting to me as an art form, from a historical and an archaeological perspective, regardless of the pop culture perspective. What led you to start making graffiti art? A mural near Cairo’s Tahrir square showing faces of victims killed during the Port Said stadium massacre in 2012. I also worked on subjects such as documenting architectural styles, and the documentation of the local fashion, and for six years I was an archaeological painter. One form of it-the most interesting one for me-was the pilgrim art, done by very normal people who do not consider themselves artists, but who do murals while building houses of people on the hajj. The idea of the folk artist was very interesting for me. My focus was mainly on the culture and the folk art of Luxor. Prior to your graffiti art, what type of art didīefore the revolution, I was a tutor in the faculty of fine arts since 2004 in Luxor University. Ammar Abo Bakr at his studio in Cairo, Egypt. Below is an interview MENASource conducted with Abo Bakr on how street art began in Egypt and where it stands today. It developed into a community of people creating, sharing, and teaching street art. One of the ways they did this was through street art.Īmmar Abo Bakr is a well-known Egyptian artist who became renowned for his street art murals that informed and shared messages with locals on the protests. In 2011, Egyptians came out in unprecedented numbers to organize and build a revolution that inspired the region.
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Since then, several thousand people have been arrested as the government cracked down on protests with reports of torture, surveillance, and restriction of social media platforms, reaching so far as arresting children, journalists, and foreigners.
The recent protests lasted until mid-October and were sparked by perceptions of widespread government corruption and popular economic grievances. Protests in Egypt started in earnest on September 20 this year, invoking images of similar protests that dominated Tahrir Square in the spring of 2011.
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