Heading in to the first anniversary of #Jan25, artists in Cairo have called for a “Mad Graffiti Week”. The idea is to intensify the graffiti work that has been daubed in downtown Cairo for the past year, and to spread the images outside of Tahrir. It is partly display of solidarity with protestors who have been killed or wounded in the ongoing unrest, and partly a riposte to the security services for painting over large swathes of stencilling that had appeared in the areas surrounding the square. Mad Graffiti Week is so mad, in fact, that it lasts a whole 10 days.
I went to meet an artist participating in MGW, in Heliopolis, close to Cairo Airport. He is a student at a nearby university, but since the revolution has taken up graffiti. The surrounding area is lit up with stencils of everything from Jim Morrison to lizards. Most are the work of Azooz.
Most of his work is light-hearted; he mainly focusses on music, but his pieces, somewhat unavoidably, have a political frisson. The work above, which he allowed me to film being painted, reads “We need tear gas with flavours,” a reference to the use by security forces on protestors at recent clashes in Tahrir.
Azooz doesn’t class himself in the same league as other artist/activist hybrids, some of whom have received stiff jail sentence for inflammatory or subversive work. He and his flatmate, Mahmoud, operate happily in broad daylight, without so much as look over the shoulder at nearby police officers.
The pair claim they are going to intensify their work over the coming few days, and hope to make it into town proper to graffiti close to Tahrir Square. There are many others like Azooz, and I will try and document some of their works leading up to the anniversary.
Some of Azooz's handiwork. The Arabic reads: "The people need tear gas in flavours"
Tags: Cairo, Egypt, Jan25, mad graffiti week, tear gas
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