Monumentalizing the ephemeral in Cairo's revolutionary street art: the case of Ganzeer

Abstract

In the international coverage of the Egyptian uprisings in 2011, Ganzeer rose to the top of visibility among influential Egyptian street artists. This essay focuses on Ganzeer’s role in creating, mobilizing, and promoting Cairene street art after the revolution as a case study in revolutionary artistic practice. My aim in this study is twofold. First, I provide an iconographic and visual analysis of several of Ganzeer’s most influential works, assessing the formal qualities that make them such effective articulations of protest. By engaging in careful formal analysis of the works, I argue that Ganzeer relies on a globally understood visual language – utilizing the aesthetics of advertisements, graphic design, and comic books, to create works that hold universal appeal and impact. Second, I analyse the modes of production, preservation, and circulation of the works. I argue that Ganzeer’s projects upend expectations that street art is a purely local, transient, spontaneous, and covert phenomenon. Instead, the projects marshal more complex networks of production in which physical and virtual collaborations were mutually reinforcing. I argue that this mode of production resulted in slippages between a local and global context, ultimately transforming the nature of the works from ephemeral, spontaneous paintings to monumental, enduring works of art. Ultimately, Ganzeer’s most famous murals function as dynamic, digital palimpsests, whose layers may be peeled back to reveal a history of shifting artistic discontent.