The moment, the first day really, things started to happen.
I wasn't really planning on engaging with the protest, I kind of had been through that
sort of thing before, I didn't really think it would lead to much.
But I just so happened to be close to Tahrir Square at the time, that moment when
protesters arrived at the square, and I just so happened to have a can of spray paint in
my backpack.
And so I decided to put it to good use.
The first thing I did was I climbed a billboard in Tahrir Square.
And I spray painted what people were chanting ‘Down Mubarak’.
Ganzeer is an Egyptian street artist…
who gained prominence during the Arab Spring.
I was inspired to respond to the uprising’s street art in particular, because I sensed
that there was a vacuum.
In the initial 18 days of the uprising where Tahrir Square was occupied by protesters, it
kind of became almost a safe zone.
It was as if people were already celebrating the demise of Mubarak.
There was art, people were singing and dancing.
As soon as you exited the square though, it was the exact opposite.
Everywhere around the city, people were very tense that people were, you know, believing
what they were seeing in the media, which was anti Tahrir Square propaganda.
And so the impetus was really to put art in other parts of the city to communicate something
other than what was being communicated through the available media channels.
One art that has grown to become rather iconic and emblematic of the uprising in the revolution.
And even the situation in Egypt today is a work titled, Tank vs Bread Biker.
A life sized tank facing off with a man on a bicycle with a tray of bread on his head.
The bread biker is a person you would see every morning in Cairo, the person who delivers
bread from the bakeries freshly baked in the morning and the word for bread in Egyptian
Arabic, is the same word for ‘life’.
So the image as a whole becomes a good representation of the idea that the military rule is at odds
with the livelihood of the everyday Egyptian.
It became a canvas for additions by other artists as events were unfolding in the months
to come.
Someone added a number of protesters between the tank and the biker.
And some of these protesters were being run over by the tank.
Some people were not very appreciative of that depiction.
And they went in painted over the protesters being run over and put a bunch of Egyptian
flags in the remaining protesters' hands and wrote fascist nationalistic slogans all over it.
Things like Egypt is for Egyptians, another group of artists came in, added a depiction
of a very giant version of the head of the military at the time, and depicted him as
a giant crouching down and eating protesters with blood coming out of his mouth.
And then later, the whole mural actually was covered in like a terrible beige colour.
It was absolutely the most amazing time to be in Cairo at that time, there were just
murals everywhere and the walls were just so alive and reflective with a million different
opinions where you had these ever evolving murals where a million different hands would
come and write stuff on it or add little visuals.
In 2014, Ganzeer decided to leave Egypt after troubling comments were made about him on national TV.
He never returned.
I think the Egyptian revolution changed me in a couple of ways.
One, it made it impossible for me to be okay with doing the kind of art that might be easily
ignored.
To me, it seems a sad waste of time to do art that doesn't have this burning urgency
to it that doesn't feel like this has to get made now.
Right and now, I'm working on a science fiction graphic novel.
The chief inspiration of the Egyptian revolution on this work is that, you know, the story
does revolve around these these individuals who are trying to bring down a big oppressive
system.
And all these efforts kind of fail.
But in fact, we discover that they haven't failed because the ones who do succeed, they
really only succeed as a result of everything that came before.
So it's really the idea which I think reflects my feelings.
You could say our efforts did fail in 2011 to 2013, but I don't think it's the end.