WEBVTT

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Humanity has been communicating on walls ever since
its inception. So the caveman painted on the wall.

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Uh… The pharaohs painted on the walls.

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So there\'s… We relate to the
wall on a very umm… primitive,

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in a very primitive form
as a… as a humanity.

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But in our case as street
artists, the…the streets are

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umm… the street is the place where
you can reach the people directly.

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So even if the media is broadcasting
messages on TV and on the radio,

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you still have access to
the people on the street.

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So use… use the street as your canvas

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and as the canvas to communicate
your message with the people.

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I think revolutions are begotten in the
streets that many times with upheavals

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and other social movements,
the kind of creative activity

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and the kind of artistic activity that you
see is… is quite literally born outside

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not in the rarefied offices of, for example
political leader or maybe a fine artist.

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So you have a street poetic, too many
of these creative forms of dissent

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during moments of revolution because even
though we might speak of Twitter and Facebook,

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a revolution doesn\'t happen without a
massive amount of bodies in public space.

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Street art is an alternative way
for people to express themselves

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when they live in a
repressed, oppressed society,

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that always happens. Under
Mubarak, we couldn\'t do that

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because the one person who wrote \"No to succession
on the wall\" got taken away from his home

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in the middle of the night and detained.
So there was no means of expression.

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But again with the revolution came
this outburst of free expression.

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People wanting to express their views and thoughts and share
them publicly and one way they\'re doing that is on the walls.

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The state has the tanks, has
the rifles, has tear gas,

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uh… the opposition has
another kind of armament

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which is street art. And in fact many street artists
refer to their spray cans and their paints as weapons.

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Umm… They can go around public
space and bomb it with messages.

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It\'s not a weaponry that\'s based
on inflicting physical violence,

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it\'s a kind of weapon
that\'s a rhetorical device

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that can be alluring and mobilizing.

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I was asked to develop an artwork in
Arabic and using the Arabic language.

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And at that time in 2010, I felt
the need to say no in Arabic.

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My message was to say no. So I
looked for a thousand different no\'s

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on everything produced under
Islamic or Arab patronage

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in the past 1400 years. And
I documented them in a book

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and the installation was exhibited

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in September of 2010 in Munich, Germany.

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And what was really interesting at the time
was the realization of what these no meant

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and how empowering it to us
to… to see them altogether

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and to see one-letter take
so many shapes and forms

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and to be utilized in so many different ways, it
gave me a very strong sense of history of where I…

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where I came from. Umm… And then
when the revolution started,

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for nine months I was a historian,

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simply documenting what
was going on around me.

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I did not feel I could be part
of the revolution at the time.

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It was violent, it was…

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The images we were consuming was
what was, what made this shift

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and I saw that several times,

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this one image of that people

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that are thrown with the garbage
on the street and they are…

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And after nine months of
consuming images of brutality

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against civilians and you…you keep
seeing this images over in videos

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and over… over again. Even if you\'re reading
in the news that these things don\'t exist

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but you are seeing them now.
You have to believe it.

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I decided to start saying no on the street.

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So I started taking these no\'s
and spraying them on the street,

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by adding messages to them. So different
\"No\" are started coming out of the book.

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And these messages

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were a representation of what I was
seeing in the past nine months.

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I saw lot of police brutality, a
lot of violence on the street,

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tear gassed, people being killed, and
people being blinded, people being shots.

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So the \"No\" was a reaction uh… to
what I was seeing in my newsfeed.

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[sil.]

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I hadn\'t done art for a long time, by the time I
went to the streets, so for me it was like wow,

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here I am drawing for a reason, because before
that it was art for commercial purposes,

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murals, and illustrating
and now I teach yoga.

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So it was quite dormant for a while.
I wasn\'t really painting

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and it meant more to me to be painting for a reason to put something
out there that\'s urgent, that people need to understand, that\'s fast.

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So if I have skills of being first,
then here\'s the way I use it.

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It just seemed right and useful
and the way to express myself

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that felt satisfying at the time. That has
probably minimal impact on the world at large,

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so…

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I like the idea of art being
about ideas, about messages,

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changing the way people think. Umm…
Just an urge to do something to…

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to express something without words, something that could be
universals. It was more to do with my frustration as a human being

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and I have an artistic skill. So I
was thinking okay, here\'s something,

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a little thing that I can do to express
this opinion that is shared by many.

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[sil.]

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Street artists came out and what they started
to produce was a highly charged politically,

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and the messages were against the
incumbent regime, they were anti Mubarak.

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Many of the miracles
also serve as memorials

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to those who were killed. So the street
art then becomes a kind of attunement

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or shrine to the deceased. And
oftentimes you also see quite overtly

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pro female messages as well.
And so you feel

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the sense that the street art is there to
make certain claims, political claims.

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So this is an important
turning point for Egypt 20-11

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because non regime sponsored messages and
images started to pervade public… public space.

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On February 11th,

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umm… it was a magical night,

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it\'s a surreal on all levels

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because we believed that… that it\'s over,

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that now we can actually start building a new
Egypt and that… Now that Mubarak was ousted

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and new Egypt was born. So I made
it a point to take my two daughters

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and their grandmother
down to Tahrir Square,

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even though it was so crowded. People were crazy all
over the street, but I wanted them to live that moment.

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And I told them, even though you\'re
very young but this is historic

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and you need to witness it. And I took
a photo of them with their grandmother

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in Tahrir Square on that day and I drove
them back home and I put them to bed,

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went back down with my husband and
we stayed till four in the morning

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celebrating this event. It was… it was like
a big party here. There were fireworks,

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people were dancing, people were singing,
people were kissing each other on the street,

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hugging strangers on the street. It was
like nothing we have ever felt before.

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It was the real… It was a moment of
real liberation and real freedom.

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Those 18 days were the most beautiful
days in my life I think because,

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it was a Utopic society in that Square. We were…
You know people from different backgrounds,

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different ideologies, I think
there were no class barriers,

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we were all just one, you know,

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Muslims, Christians, women, men. I
wasn\'t that surprise when he was ousted

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and once he was ousted, I wasn\'t really part of the
celebrations either because the Army came in that day and I…

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I didn\'t think that was it and it succeeded, I
was sure that there was much more to unfold and…

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and that it wasn\'t time to leave the square
even. When the news broke out, I cried a lot

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and it was like a release. There
was a catharsis that happened,

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when I was very aware that I did not feel the need to go and
celebrate with the rest of the crowd in Tahrir, this wasn\'t a time.

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Media does not necessarily always
highlight the role of the woman

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but in Tahrir and during this 18 days,

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they… the women played an even stronger
role in a very chauvinist society

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where men were… were demonstrating

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to look on their right and their left and
find that women are chanting just as loud

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and facing bullets just as fiercely.

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This came to the forefront during the 18 days,
as society really became equal in those 18 days.

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Tahrir became an oasis

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where a module of what we would
dream Egypt would become.

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The thing is, the… the image that I had of… of
woman in general, you know, you say they\'re weaker

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and they wouldn\'t stand,
standing in the… in the streets,

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they wouldn\'t stand gas bombs and everything.
And that was not the case though.

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They were much stronger than us, you know,
and they were the ones standing there and…

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and you feel ashamed. You stand there and you feel
ashamed if you cough or something or you run.

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You look at them and they are standing
there, they are standing there

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and they are doing everything
that you wish you were doing.

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And then, like it hurts, you know.
It hurts your… your…

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You say, I\'m man, you know, I
should stand more than that.

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I should be stronger. I should support them
strongly and then you go back, you know.

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So uh… what happened was… was…

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was beautiful and they stood there.

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When Mubarak stepped down, we all had very high
expectations and women felt that this was a new chapter.

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But then very quickly they
were, their hopes were dashed

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and they were disappointed because
when SCAF formed a committee,

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it was a Committee of Wise Men
to chart the way forward.

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There was not a single woman there. And then when we
went out to celebrate Women\'s Day on the 8th of March

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and to demand equal rights in the Square.

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We went back to Tahrir Square and
we were attacked by a mob of men,

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you know, asking us to go
home and that was shocking

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uh… because we somehow had expected that
things would change for women in this country.

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Our first Parliament had only
2% women representation,

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also the surge in sexual harassment
right from the 11th of February

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when there was a mob attack on Lara Logan,
the CBS reporter, that was shocking.

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Uh… Then came the virginity
tests on the women protesters.

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Seventeen women had virginity
checks performed on them

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to break them and humiliate them.

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There was a lot of brutal attacks on women,
specifically targeted sexual harassment.

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Very aggressive campaigns in
Tahrir and around Tahrir,

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clearly to intimidate women
from going down to the street,

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umm… because we knew that they were
targeted specifically at intimidating women

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because of the monstrosity of the acts

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and how organized they were
and how varied the targets.

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So they would rape a very young
child and, nine or a ten year old

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and an old woman. So they did
not differentiate an age.

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It was not about a specific profile,

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they were just raping women in a
very systematic aggressive way,

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very brutally and that
scared a lot of women.

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I had read an article about how these
men form circles around the victim,

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it\'s very organized type of harassment
done at certain times, during protests.

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So I really wanted to show that this was done also on
Mohammed Mahmoud Street, it was very famous for that…

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that area for finding
woman getting harassed.

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So I wanted to show how organized it was. The woman here
should feel attractive when they walk in the street

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and they shouldn\'t be harassed and men should
be more respectful and it would be great

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if we all had the spray can and we could, you know,
spray them away like flies. It would be great.

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So I was hoping to… Yeah, to
even destroyed the stereotype of

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\"Oh, she\'s asking for it. Look how she\'s dressed. So
therefore that was my anger at making her look really,

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you know, high heels lips…
Whatever they consider too much

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and just put it out there and make her look confident and strong. I
was hoping, you know, to make a woman tower over these small men.

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The assault on women was very aggressive

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and this is when I decided
to spray the cat.

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Because in Arabic Utah is also a term
and it has some sexual connotation

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when a guy calls on a woman
on the street, Utah is also…

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So I thought I would ask the
cat to rebel this time.

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So I started spraying the cat also on the street
as a symbol of the woman that will rebel.

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To encourage them, to keep going down to
the street, to keep owing the street,

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so rebel cat came in that context
to… to remind the women that

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you need to be down on the street,
you are half the society,

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so your voice is important,
you need to keep rebelling.

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The army was trying to…

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to catch some protesters and this
young woman who was there protesting

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was caught by three military
men who tried to drag her

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and she was wearing, she\'s veiled,
and she was wearing abaya

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that covers her body. Underneath the abaya, she was
wearing nothing, it\'s her right, it\'s her body.

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And when the… when the
army person pulled her,

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he opened her, he stripped
her of her clothes

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and her blue bra was exposed
and her face was never shown

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but what we could see on the
video was the policeman

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uh… stepping on her with his military boots

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and beating her. And it
was a very graphic video

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to see her body violated
and beaten so brutally.

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[music]

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Their reaction to it was…

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was… was because there were so
many other things compiling

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but that video specifically, you come to a point where one
thing happens and you feel like you can\'t take it anymore.

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I decided to capture that specific incident

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by painting the blue bra
on the streets of Cairo

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to remind us of the shame that we felt as a
society, when that woman was humiliated.

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And this… this video when
it was seen and shared,

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a lot of mass protests by women

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went down to the street to one of the
chants lines that they were chanting was,

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(inaudible), so the girls
of Egypt are a red line.

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So they said this is where you stop, you
can\'t, this… this has gone too far.

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And… and they had all of this creative
beautiful chants on the street about

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uh… about the importance of
women and their role in society

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and their role in the revolution.

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So I was not the only one working on the blue
bra, it captured the imagination of many artists

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and there\'s a lot of artwork that was done
on it. All I did was… was simplify it

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and spray it on the street as a reminder.

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Nefertiti with a gasmask is a call.

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It says, build on history. So it…
it\'s building on a very iconic

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historic image of women, of Egyptian women.

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And the… adding the gas mask

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immediately tells you that she came to
life, she\'s part of this revolution.

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She\'s still alive, she\'s still around us, she\'s still here.
And these women who are coming out are just an embodiment.

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So it is an extremely intelligent visual

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and the fact that it\'s still
on the wall till today,

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it says a lot. It says that
this story will continue,

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that this story uh… is yet to be concluded.

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When you walk up in Mohamed Mahmoud
right now and you see Nefertiti,

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it\'s… it\'s burnt and full of
like, bird shots and everything.

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You have the bird shots and you have the fire on
it and everything. It really serves the cause.

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It\'s…The Nefertiti has revolted and she\'s
still standing there two years after

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and she\'s still strong. And for me the…

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the image itself of Nefertiti, it\'s…
it\'s much more stronger right now.

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Yeah, in the case of Bahia
Shehab and many others,

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these are also either historians

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
or they\'re acutely aware of history. And for them
Pharaonic Egypt is a marker of the longevity

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
of the history of Egypt.
So when they bring back

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
for example images of Nefertiti or
wall paintings from Pharaonic times

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
or in the case of Bahia Shehab,

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
these kind of chiseled
calligraphic words that mean \"No,\"

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
they\'re actually turning a very contemporary revolution
into a historical event. They are very much aware

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
of the historical import of that revolution and
they\'re using historically significant vocabularies

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
to make that point.

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:53.000
[sil.]

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
The first person to call for prayer was,

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
his name was Bilal and he was chosen by the
prophet because he had the most beautiful voice.

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
Umm… Unfortunately throughout history,

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
women were never allowed
to call for prayer.

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
In mosques they have their own
space and they are not allowed…

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
Their voices considered
something that is sacrilegious

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
to share with a wider audience. It\'s a… It\'s
something that they should keep for themselves.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
So even if they are reciting the Quran,

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
it should not be in a very
singing, loud voice as the men do.

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
So the call for prayer idea

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
that was part of an exhibition
commissioned for museum in Denmark.

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
In that exhibition I was
highlighting the minarets of Islam

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
and how these were lost. And these minarets
were painted on a… on a very long roll.

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
To go with these minarets
was a call for prayer

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
that I recorded using the sound of a young
Metro soprano from the Cairo Opera House

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
and she sang it in a…

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
in a very beautiful enchanting voice.

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
The message was that, it is time
now for the feminine to rise.

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
It\'s time for the voice
of the women to be heard.

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
I think the revolution

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
provided the space for women. It was
like an… It\'s an outburst of creativity,

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
of talent, of passion. The fact
that these women were no longer,

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
you know, the fear barrier gone and
they\'re not afraid to express themselves.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
They have found their space and are finding it every
day. I think that space is growing every day.

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
One of the chants that was
raised and on the street is

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
(inaudible) and it\'s… it means
the voice of women is revolution

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
and it\'s in direct
retaliation to some parties

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
in society who say, specifically Islamists,

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
who say that the voice of a woman is
something again that should be covered.

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
And women retaliated to that by saying that
the voice of the woman is a revolution.

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
A lot of artists again have contributed
to that. One of them is to highlight

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
with a brilliant cartoon,
where she captured the…

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
the gagging of the mouth of one protester

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
in front of the presidential palace.
She captured that moment

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
and she highlighted the fact that her
voice is the… is the revolution,

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:08.000
is the real revolution. Maybe
what we didn\'t realize is that,

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
we all had a dream for Egypt
while everybody was in Tahrir.

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
We did not necessarily
all have the same dream

00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
and this is the phase that
we need to move on to is…

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
is trying to find one vision for Egypt,

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
is trying to paint her
and then you image that

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
most of the people in society agree on because you
had the Islamists who imagined a veiled Egypt,

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
you had the liberals who
imagined a free Egypt from,

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
free from everything. So we realized how…

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
how far the spectrum of our dreams were

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
but that does not mean that
these 18 days did not unify

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
and women were… were really important,
women became equals in the fight.

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:35.000
Women were fighting the same fight,
chanting the thing chants in Tahrir.

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
Going down to the street came at the point

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
where I felt I do not want to be a historian anymore,
I don\'t want to be someone who simply documenting,

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
as important as I feel it is to document

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
but I wanted to be part of it.
I live in Cairo

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
and I felt the need to be part
of what was going on around me.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
And I have two Egyptian daughters and they
matter and their future… their future matters.

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
What they… What they want
from their country matters.

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
So going down to the street was
a very conscious decision.

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
I know the consequences of…
of being on the street.

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
And I choose to go down
to the street consciously

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
because I believe that now
is the time for us to…

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
to speak, now is the time.

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:15.000
If… if we don\'t voice our opinion
now, when will we do it?

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
The \"No\" is constantly coming back to me.
I think the \"No\" project will…

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
will keep… will live on, it\'s
a thousand different \"No\'s,\"

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
it\'s… I have a thousand bullets
to shoot anytime I want.

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
So, and this gives me a lot of confidence
to know that there\'s always a project

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
that I can always communicate
with on the street.

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
It\'s just been the same mechanism over and over again. Cycles
and cycles, same… same thing, same regime. Are you hopeful?

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
I\'m not sure, I\'m observing. I\'m
hopeful once I see people move

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
and get out to be more aware of
things, that always brings hope

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
but I think with that comes some kind of danger. I\'m
not sure but things have not really changed that much.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
We\'re more oppressed now than before.

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
Cairo is a very great city

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
and every time I visit Cairo, I feel
like I want to clean all the (inaudible)

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
and clean all the trees and clean
the river and clean the cars.

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
I just feel like everything
needs to be cleaned.

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
And I think this… this grayness, this… this
dullness reflects on the lives of the people

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
living in the city. And
I think in that sense

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
art is very important, because if… if
you\'re surrounded by this grayness

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
then it will reflect on you.

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
And if you are surrounded by beauty,
it will also reflect on you.

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
And with that thought I think art is important
and that\'s why we go down on the street,

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
that\'s why we keep painting the street

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
because art has the power to change the lives
of these people that are on the street

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
and it is their lives that you want to
change. So by adding color to the city,

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
by adding ideas to the city,
by interacting with people,

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
is how I think change will come and
how you will influence their minds

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
and change their minds.

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
I don\'t think in our lifetime we will live
to see the Egypt we would like to see.

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
I hope that in their lifetime

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
that this Egypt to exist and
that… What we dream of today,

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
what we plan today, the seeds
that we sow today will grow

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
and they will reap its fruits.

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
I doubt we will benefit from what
we are starting but we are starting

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
and it\'s their job to continue the
story, to keep writing the story.

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:25.000
[sil.]

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:43.000
[music]