A call to action

"This is an appeal to help save lives."

The prominent street-artist Ganzeer recently announced the Mad Graffiti Week initiative encouraging people in Egypt and beyond to take to the streets from January 13-25 to raise awareness about the situation in Egypt: "Our only hope right now is to destroy the military council using the weapon of art."

As I

I haven't actually seen the posters on the streets of Cairo, but they have been circulating online. Get ready.
http://ganzeer.blogspot.com/2011/12/mad-graffiti-week-jan-13-25-appeal-to.html

This is an appeal to help save lives. The Egyptian Military Council has unleashed a brutal crackdown on peaceful protests by the Egyptian people, calling for the resignation of the military council and a cancellation of the sham elections that they’ve been running under their supervision. Soldiers have shown us no mercy, hitting fallen women with their batons, stomping on skulls with their boots, and shooting unarmed civilians dead. I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes and was unable to stop it. It’s a soul-shattering pain like no other.

The lies being disseminated by military-controlled media are as equally painful. Nothing hurts more than such shameless injustice. I fear the military’s strategy will only lead my country to an armed civil war. In an effort to keep our struggle peaceful, I hear by call on artists everywhere to support the Egyptian revolution with their art. As the genius that is Alan Moore once said, “[a satire] destroys you in the eyes of your community, it shows you up as ridiculous, lame, pathetic, worthless, in the eyes of your community, in the eyes of your family, in the eyes of your children, in the eyes of yourself, and if it's a particularly good bard, and he's written a particularly good satire, then three hundred years after you're dead, people are still gonna be laughing."

Our only hope right now is to destroy the military council using the weapon of art. From January 13 to 25, the streets of Egypt will see an explosion of anti-military street-art. If you are a street artist elsewhere in the world, please do what you can in your city to help us. Even if you are not a street-artist. If you’re a comicbook artist, a musician, or filmmaker, whatever artistic talent you have can be of big help. If you can do something before the designated date, please do! We need all the help we can get.

Finding “inspiration” is not at all difficult. A quick visit to scaf-crimes.blogspot.com will do the trick. On behalf of Egypt’s street-art community, allow me to thank anybody in the world willing to help. Your art may very well save lives. 

If you need any instruction, here is "a how-to-graffiti guide for those who scheme and those who dream."
http://crimethinc.com/tools/downloads/pdfs/walls_are_alive.pdf

The Martyr

Translation (partly obstructed by the tree):

Martyr

Tarek Abdel Latif

32 years-old, engineer

In light of last Friday's demonstration to honor the martyrs of the recent clashes, this weekend I went in search of another mural in the Martyr Mural Series by the street artist Ganzeer.

This mural is located in El Gezira, near the 6th of October Bridge. It was painted on April 16th, 2011.

al-Shaheed (Martyr)

This is one mural in a series titled The Martyr Murals. The series is the brainchild of artist Ganzeer (aka Mohamed Fahmy). In his words, "The goal [of the project] is to, on the one hand, honor the martyrs, and on the other hand provide passers-by with a reminder of Egypt's struggle for freedom, democracy, and equality."
Every mural in the series has the word "al Shaheed" (martyr), the person's name, age and occupation. This is Seif Allah Mustafa. He was 16 years old and he was a student.

There used to be a Martyr Mural near a favorite juice shop of mine in Midan Falaki, but unfortunately I was never able to see it because it was painted over in late April. (The mural itself was only painted in March so it was only up for about a month).


Ganzeer has his own blog
http://ganzeer.blogspot.com/2011/03/martyr-murals-project.html

Ganzeer also created a google map to map street art in Cairo. The map, of course, couldn't and doesn't include all of Cairo's street art . While I think the map is a great idea, there's so much street art in Cairo-- you can turn a corner and find something interesting-- that I'm not sure how effective the map is. Some of the tags do have pictures (although many don't) which is helpful if you are looking for a specific peace of art.
-I am going to tag all of my posts with the neighboorhood where the street art work from that post is.
-I will also provide a location (street/ landmark), in case any of you are in Cairo!
-I will also tag the name of the street artist (if known).
-If the street art is a stencil or part of a series, I will tag it as well.
-I will include the date of when the photos were taken, all photos that I post are my photographs.
http://ganzeer.com/cairostreetart/index.html


This mural is in downtown Cairo, on 26 July St. (a major street), in front of the Dar Al Qada' (the Supreme Court). This photo was taken on September 9th, 2011.