Street Art & Identity

There is an unending source of creativity spilling out onto Mohamed Mahmoud Street these days, in contrast to the unending violence and brutality that marked it during recent clashes. The pictures above come from the wall of the grammar school adjacent to the American University and were taken last night as I was walking home from the Tahrir metro stop. This continuous image stretching almost 100 meters appeared a few days ago as a compliment to graffiti on the other end of the wall, parts of which are shown in these pictures.

Images of Egyptians killed in the football massacre in the city of Port Said in February....which led to deadly clashes on this street for the following week.

The street sign in the bottom right reads: This is your address, Tahrir

The two faces: Mubarak on the right, Tantawi on the left

The soldier and the protester face off here

The last few images have a clear influence from ancient Egyptian paintings, making for some gorgeous and very original graffiti...but also raising the question, why the Pharonic imagery? I've seen several artists at work on this street in the past few weeks, but they're often surrounded by news cameras or groups of onlookers. As I walked home last night, I came across one of the artists atop a ladder painting hieroglyphics (he's featured at the end of this Al Jazeera English report). He was alone so I took the opportunity to ask him about the art.

What's the idea behind the Pharonic characters and imagery, I asked. He explained that he and his partner, who was working nearby, were seeking to create a truly Egyptian expression by combining Egypt's triumphant past with popular Egyptian images. They painted portraits of the revolution's martyrs to commemorate them and the other images to remind Egyptians that the fight is for Egypt, all of Egypt, not any one particular version of it pushed by political parties or movements. They chose to paint on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and not in Tahrir because, he said, this is where the revolution is now; it's not in Tahrir anymore, this is where people are fighting and dying these days, and people need to know that.

In some ways, this is an insightful analysis of the fact that a figurehead was removed after the 18-day revolution last winter, but much of the regime remained intact, and the task now is to dismantle the institutions of oppression and the culture of corruption.

One man from a group of passing Egyptians snarkily asked the artist why he was writing in a language nobody understood, and instantly he got defensive. I understand it, he said, and so should you because it's part of your history as an Egyptian. Do you want to live in the Egypt that began with the entrance of Islam in the year 693 or the Egypt that has a history stretching back seven millenia, the artist retorted.

Clearly, one of the issues in the rebuilding of Egypt after the fall of Hosni Mubarak is the reconstruction of the Egyptian identity, and this street art is reflective of that intellectual and social battle.

Before I left, the artist on the ladder lost his balance and as he grabbed the ladder to regain it, he knocked his bucket of red paint off its hook covering himself with paint and splashing me as well. Water soluble, he assured me, and in fact it was!

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In addition to that initial wall on the first block of Mohamed Mahmoud Street, people have begun painting the concrete block walls put up by the army on the side streets after the February clashes. There are walls on five consecutive blocks, from Tahrir into the adjoining neighborhood of Abdeen. Each street and each wall has its own feel. The ones closer to Abdeen, where local residents are less than thrilled about having revolutionary activity in their midst, have little graffiti or have been whitewashed at some point.

Closer to Tahrir, young artists were painting street scenes this afternoon on two walls. On Faliki Street, the scene was of artists painting a wall. On Yusuf Ghindi, the scene presented a continuation of the street as if the wall were not there; sidewalk, trees, cars and people headed to a natural vanishing point. One of the artists' friends, a guy named Ghali, told me the idea was to open up the neighborhood, to make like the walls weren't there. He joked with a young guy on a bicycle that he should keep on riding, as the street was now open and he could reach the other side.

For now, at least, the neighborhood is only figuratively open. The walls remain, traffic is quiet, business is slow, but at least the tempers are relatively cool for now. Today was the first day to register candidacy for presidential elections in June, so things are bound to start heating up again soon.