During 18 gripping days in early 2011, dramatic images emerged from Egypt set against a soundtrack of public rage.
Round the clock news coverage of the demonstrations centred on Cairo’s Tahrir Square, as the world waited to see if the region’s most populous country would follow Tunisia’s lead in throwing off the rule of their strongman president.
Amid the protests, artists, activists and plain fed-up people made their mark in graffiti on the walls and pavements around Tahrir Square.
The graffiti of the Egyptian revolution tells the story of its people’s shifting sentiments: from the early days of shaky handwritten messages telling long-ruling President Hosni Mubarak to leave after the uprising began on January 25, 2011, to fascinating mash-ups of Egyptian identity evoking the artist’s pride in the people’s strength, angry demands that the people’s voice be heard, and humorous mockery of the system they were working to overthrow.
On February 11, 2011, Mubarak finally stepped down, sparking wild, nearly uncontainable euphoria among the protesters.
But graffiti artists kept working to tell the world the tumultuous ongoing story of the uprising.
