The Colors Of The Revolution

Art as protest, means to express complex political and social ideas, is not a novel concept: just think of Picasso's statement on the tragedy of war in Guernica, or Banksy's murals on the West Bank barrier. But in Egypt, where the Ministry of Culture controlled all public expression, protest art was hard to find — at least until last year, when 18 days of mass revolts toppled President Mubarak's regime and unexpected freedoms flourished, including the right to make art.

The Egyptian revolution was an uprising of all classes and all ages in which over 800 people lost their lives. It was also a war of words and images, a creative outpouring of anger and hope, in which Egyptians joined together to say and to show that they wanted something different.

The morning of January 29, after protesters routed the police, Egyptians woke up to see their cities covered in improbable graffiti: “Down with Mubarak,” “Mubarak: Game Over,” “To Every Injustice There Is an End.” Street art and graffiti, an underground phenomenon before the uprising, have bloomed since, its young practitioners honoring the dead of the revolution and lampooning the military authorities currently in charge.

Here are some instructions of the activist's plan on how to act and react during the protests.

In the squares in Cairo and Alexandria where millions gathered, protesters outdid one another in displays of visual wit, creating plays, art installations, and protest signs that became instant classics. Today, the spectacle of Tahrir Square is already being memorialized in countless books, films, and photography exhibitions. The iconography of the Egyptian revolution has been imprinted on the collective imagination.

The revolution has also inspired inevitable commercial appropriations, from pop-music videos to ads for detergents that claim to “clean the country” or for internet companies that offer to help Egypt press the Restart button. While the protests were still ongoing, street vendors showed their own ingenuity, hawking patriotic accessories, posters of the revolution’s heroes, and stickers mocking the old regime. Today, revolutionary memorabilia has replaced Pharaonic knickknacks in street-side stalls. Egypt’s present and immediate future suddenly seem so much more interesting than its storied past. “Hold your head high,” say the baseball caps for sale in downtown Cairo. “You’re Egyptian.”

A man walks past a shuttered storefront with graffiti celebrating two of the revolution’s media weapons: the Al Jazeera satellite station and Facebook.

Artists decorated this boarded storefront on May 1 as part of a consciousness-raising campaign. The mural mocks the Mubarak family and criticizes Israel and the military authorities who currently run the country. Graffiti and street artists are out in force now, although their work doesn’t always last long. This mural has since been whitewashed.

This calligraphy in Midan Tahrir celebrates those who died during the revolution. It’s verse 169 of the third chapter of the Koran, Surat al-Imran: “Think not of those who are slain in Allah’s way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.”

According to an official fact-finding committee, at least 846 Egyptians died during the revolution. Pictures of the revolution’s shuhada’ (“martyrs”) began appearing almost immediately among the protesters. This stencil, reproduced on many walls in Cairo, honors a man named Mustafa Al Sawy. He was a 25-year-old lab technician. He died on January 25, shot in the neck and chest by police.

A sticker for sale in downtown Cairo shows Mubarak with Libya’s embattled ruler, Moammar Gadhafi, in a Brokeback Mountain parody. It’s just one of many spirited, amateur photomontages ridiculing Egypt’s former dictator.

On January 30, protesters changed the Mubarak subway-station plaque to read “The Martyrs Station.” Subway officials cleaned the graffiti, but protesters reapplied it. The name change has now been made official. Mubarak’s picture and name are also quickly disappearing from the schools, streets, offices, and public gardens where they were once ubiquitous.

A poster from Coca-Cola’s new “Let’s Make Tomorrow Better” campaign by the Fortune PromoSeven agency.

A warning to Mubarak: “The youth will carry you out with their hands.”

Protesters converged on the national headquarters of President Mubarak’s National Democratic Party, which for decades had a stranglehold on the country’s political life. The building, in central Cairo, burned for several days. The graffiti on the left reads, “Leave, you idiot!” On the right it says: “Put Hosni and [first lady] Suzanne and Gamal [the president’s son] and that dog [Minister of Interior Habib] Al-Adli on trial.” Now discussions have begun over the building’s future. Suggestions have included turning it into public offices for human-rights groups, building a memorial to those who died during the revolution, and transforming the land into a public park. Some activists have argued that the building shouldn’t be demolished but kept as a visual reminder of the people’s fury.

After Mubarak was charged with corruption and ordering the police to fire on demonstrators, the state-owned magazine October (which until recently had toed a sycophantic, government line) ran this cover story, entitled “The Day of Reckoning,” speculating on whether the former president might face the death penalty.

The red, white, and black of the Egyptian flag have never been so popular. The colors are seen here in a ubiquitous sticker modeled on Egyptian license plates.

Sources: theatlantic, guardian, printmag

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