Street Art in the Middle East 9781784539900, 9781788317238, 9781786736055

Table of contents :
Cover
Half title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Egypt: Revolutionary Street Art in Cairo
2 Lebanon: Walls of Conflict in a Divided City
3 Palestine: Local and International Street Art on the Separation Barrier
4 Iran: Martyrs, Memorials, and Public Space
5 Bahrain: Building Community through Street Art
6 Oman: Promoting History and Culture on the Streets
7 Tunisia: Street Art and Tourism in the Djerbahood
8 United Arab Emirates: Street Art as Cultural Capital
9 Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Different Challenges
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Street Art in the Middle East

Street Art in the Middle East Sabrina DeTurk

I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Paperback edition first published 2021 Copyright © Sabrina DeTurk, 2019 Sabrina DeTurk has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Adriana Brioso Cover image © The Prosperity Project All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for the book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-7845-3990-0 PB: 978-0-7556-3850-5 ePDF: 978-1-7867-3605-5 eBook: 978-1-7867-2600-1 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Egypt: Revolutionary Street Art in Cairo 2 Lebanon: Walls of Conflict in a Divided City 3 Palestine: Local and International Street Art on the Separation Barrier 4 Iran: Martyrs, Memorials, and Public Space 5 Bahrain: Building Community through Street Art 6 Oman: Promoting History and Culture on the Streets 7 Tunisia: Street Art and Tourism in the Djerbahood 8 United Arab Emirates: Street Art as Cultural Capital 9 Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Different Challenges Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

vi ix 1 21 45 69 89 107 123 137 155 179 201 205 226 243

Figures For additional photographs, please see www.streetartinthemiddleeast.com. 1 Ammar Abo Bakr, Mural of Aliaa El-Mahdy and Samira Ibrahim. Photo credit: Gigi Ibrahim (Flickr: Women in the revolution) (CC BY 2.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0]), via Wikimedia Commons 27 2 Ammar Abo Bakr, Sheikh Emad Effat. Photo credit: Megapress/Alamy Stock Photo 31 3 Various artists, Martyrs of Port Said (mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street). Photo credit: Alain Guilleux/Alamy Stock Photo 33 4 Omar Picasso, Tantawi is Mubarak. Photo credit: Gigi Ibrahim from Cairo, Egypt (Two face of the same coin—‫)ﻣﺎﻣﺎﺗﺶ ﻛﻠﻒ اﻟﻠﻲ‬ (CC BY 2.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0]), via Wikimedia Commons 36 5 Nefertiti in a gas mask, Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author 53 6 Jad El Khoury, Mural on a bombed-out building, Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author 58 7 Halwani, Lebanese singer Sabah, Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author 63 8 ASHEKMAN, “To be free or not to be,” Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author 64 9 Separation barrier between Israel and Palestine. Photo credit: Author 73 10 Banksy, Dove, 2007, Bethlehem, Palestine. Photo credit: Author 74 11 Portrait of Leila Khaled on Israel/Palestine separation barrier. Photo credit: Author 84 12 Stencils on a wall in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, Israel. Photo credit: Author 87 13 Mural on the wall of the former American Embassy, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: Author 92

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14 Martyr mural, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: Author 99 15 Mural, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: Author 101 16 Mural by Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: http://www. youngpersianartists.com 102 17 Anti-Formula 1 Graffiti in Barbar, Bahrain. Photo credit: Mohamed CJ (CC BY-SA 3.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0]), from Wikimedia Commons 113 18 Woman with balloons, by the Prosperity Project, Manama, Bahrain. Photo credit: Author 115 19 Street art in Adliya neighborhood, Manama, Bahrain. Photo credit: Author 116 20 Sinan Hussein, Mural in Adliya neighborhood (detail), Manama, Bahrain. Photo credit: Author 120 21 Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author 125 22 Hamad Al-Salimi, Heritage, 2015, Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author 127 23 Anwar Sonya, Announcement, 2015, Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author 128 24 Mohammed Al-Sayegh, Nizwa, 2015, Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author 130 25 Abdulmajeed Karooh, The Door, 2015 (shown with original door on the right), Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author 132 26 Zoo Project, Mural, Tunis, Tunisia. Photo credit: By SupapleX (CC BY 3.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0]), from Wikimedia Commons 141 27 Zoo Project, Refugee portrait project in Camp Choucha, Tunisia. Photo credit: http://www.zoo-project.com 144 28 Street art on Rue Lenine, Tunis, Tunisia. Photo credit: Author 148 29 Street art in Djerba, Tunisia. Photo credit: Author 149 30 Street art in Djerba, Tunisia. Photo credit: Author 153

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Figures

31 eL Seed, Mural on Bank Street, Sharjah, UAE. Photo credit: Author 162 32 Dubai Canvas Festival 2016, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author 168 33 Street Art Night, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author 172 34 Ron English, Mural for Dubai Walls, City Walk, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author 174 35 Hua Tunan, Falcon mural on 2nd December Street, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author 177 36 Abu Malek al-Shami, Mural, Darraya, Syria. Photo credit: Quartz Media http://www.qz.com 181 37 Murad Subay, Mural protesting sanctions against Yemen. Photo credit: Murad Subay http://www.muradsubay.com 185 38 Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali, Makka. Photo credit: Street Art News http:// www.streetartnews.net 187 39 Example of beautification murals on T-walls in Baghdad, Iraq. Photo credit: 1st Lt. Angel Richardson (https://www.dvidshub.net/image/133951) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons 194 40 Shamsia Hassani, Birds of No Nation series, Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo credit: Shamsia Hassani [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons 198

Acknowledgments This project developed out of an interest in artwork addressing issues of war and protest in the Middle East, and I am grateful to colleagues at La Salle University, notably John Baky, and at Saint Joseph’s University who supported and critiqued my early research in this area. I am also grateful to artists Daniel Heyman and Jane Irish whose work inspired much of that early research. As the project developed, I benefited from feedback from colleagues at Zayed University and deeply appreciate their insightful questions and suggestions for new avenues of exploration. I particularly appreciate the assistance from Asma Bukhammas, Meriem McKenzie, and Malak Quota who assisted with translations and the support of my colleagues in the dean’s office, Ann-Maree Reaney, Janet Bellotto, and David Howarth, who willingly assisted in covering my responsibilities to afford me much needed time to write. Adina Hempel was instrumental in establishing the research group that supported the project, and I am grateful to the university for their financial support, which enabled me to visit and photograph many of the locations discussed. Many of the themes and artworks discussed in this book have been addressed elsewhere, and I am indebted to the scholars whose studies of street art and graffiti in the Arab world have informed my own research. Sarina Wakefield, whose work in the area of museum and heritage studies in the Gulf region informed the chapters on Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, has been an invaluable colleague and friend, and has consistently encouraged me during the project. The comments provided by the anonymous reviewers of the first draft of the manuscript were extremely helpful, as were those provided by my editor, Lisa Goodrum. I appreciate both her patience and timely prodding in the early stages of completing the manuscript, and also thank Rory Gormley at I. B. Tauris for his assistance in seeing this book to completion. I am also grateful to the many street artists, known and unknown, whose work has been an ongoing source of fascination and inspiration throughout the research and writing of this book. Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Rick De Coyte, and daughter, Violet DeTurk, for accompanying me on some unusual research journeys in search of street art and for their general good humor and support throughout the writing process.

Introduction

The making of a work of art is one historical process among other acts, events and structures—it is a series of actions in but also on history. It may become intelligible only within the context of given and imposed structures of meaning; but in its turn it can alter and at times disrupt these structures. A work of art may have ideology (in other words, those ideas, images and values which are generally accepted, dominant) as its material, but it works that material; it gives it a new form and at certain moments that new form is in itself a subversion of ideology.1

The proliferation of street art in the Middle East and North Africa, particularly during and in the wake of the Arab Spring of 2011, has been widely documented through social media, websites, news outlets, and several published photo essays. Although street art can be defined as any art developed in public spaces, my concern here is with two-dimensional works including graffiti, murals, wheatpasting, and so on. Virtually every country in the region has an active street art practice, although the style, quantity, and quality of the work vary widely. Countries such as Syria, Iraq, and Yemen see somewhat less activity due to the widespread conflict in those areas; however, there is an emerging trend of using street art as a therapeutic tool—particularly with children, including those in refugee camps. The status of street art also varies widely between countries, with some governments labeling the practice as illegal and removing many works once created, some tacitly accepting the art as long as it conforms to certain social and political norms, and others actively pursuing and promoting street art as a cultural asset, often to boost tourism and create public awareness of the arts community. Likewise, the purpose and themes of the works are different from country to country. I have identified three broad areas of concern which I address here: protest art created by local artists in response to specific political concerns (for example, the street art created during the Arab Spring); politically or socially relevant work created by artists from outside the region, often internationally famous street artists; and work without specific political or social context (what might be termed “decorative” street art) created by both local and international artists as part of a cultural program within a city or country.

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Although several scholars have written insightful analyses of the role street art played in the Arab revolutions of 2011, there has been a general lack of attention paid to the broader scope and context for street art production in the region. For example, Rafael Schacter’s extensive 2013 book, The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti, devotes only thirty-nine pages to “the rest of the world,” identified as Melbourne, Sydney, and Tokyo.2 The regions that make up the “world atlas” are North America, Latin America, Northern Europe, and Southern Europe and there is no mention of street artists working in the Middle East or North Africa (the MENA region). There are a few references to artists from the MENA region who have done projects in places such as South Africa, Istanbul, Cambodia, and Beijing but no acknowledgment of a local street art practice in areas outside those identified above. Likewise, there has been limited published work that covers street art from different countries within the region in the same text. There is certainly little, if any, literature that discusses the presence and use of street art in peaceful and prosperous countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) alongside its role in revolution and protest in countries such as Egypt and Palestine. While I do not attempt a direct comparison of the works produced in such disparate settings, I do hope that by placing these analyses in a single volume I can contribute to a broadened discussion of the ongoing and multidimensional significance of street art as a public, visual medium in the Middle East.

Street art versus graffiti The first substantive exploration of graffiti as an art form was made in the early 1980s by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, two New York photographers whose publication Subway Art explored the underground, yet in some ways extremely visible, world of the graffiti writers whose works proliferated around the city, notably on subway cars.3 Cooper and Chalfant not only produced extraordinary photographs of these ephemeral works of art but also gained the trust of many of the writers who created the pieces, affording the authors the opportunity to learn the language and rules of these writers. Cooper and Chalfant produced what might be considered the first art historical examination of graffiti, later to become known as street art, in that their book discussed the history, terminology, technique, and visual style of New York graffiti. The fact that their investigation and analysis required an in-depth understanding of the context and constraints of artistic practice as experienced by the graffiti writers

Introduction

3

aligns their work with the field of social art history, in that it is informed not only by visual and formal analysis but also by investigation and interpretation of the social, economic, and political contexts of artistic production. Cooper and Chalfant’s book also introduces, though probably unintentionally, examples of the fluid relationship between the terms “graffiti” and “art” that eventually cohere in the term “street art.” Although the book is titled Subway Art, the authors adhere throughout to the use of the term “graffiti” to identify the tagging or writing that they are chronicling and examining. The graffiti writers themselves, however, seem to view the two (graffiti and art) as more intertwined; the subway cars often bear epigrams such as “from coney island [sic] to pelham bay [sic] graffiti is art and here to stay”4 or the wistful. “There once was a time when the Lexington was a beautiful line which when children of the ghetto expressed with art, not with crime. But then as evolution past, the transits [sic] buffing did its blast. And now the trains look like rusted trash. Now we wonder if graffiti will EVER LAST????”5 This nexus between graffiti and art was already being critically and commercially acknowledged through the success of the young artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, known in the 1970s as the graffiti writer SAMO, who began producing paintings on canvas in the early 1980s and saw his works rise rapidly in both popularity and price. By positioning himself as the first graffiti writer to cross over into the mainstream art market, Basquiat not only increased his own artistic profile but also attracted the disdain of other writers who saw him as selling out through his embrace of the gallery scene and through his alignment with commercially successful artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring. With Basquiat, Haring is also identified as one of the first graffiti artists to bridge the gap between working on the streets and maintaining a presence in commercial galleries—indeed, Haring is, in some accounts, accorded the prime position in that regard. However, the circumstances of Haring and Basquiat’s adoption by and immersion in the mainstream world of the gallery were quite different and impacted their ability and perhaps even desire to continue to connect to the street. Basquiat was celebrated for his raw, untamed, even primitive style and there was a real danger that the work would lose its commercial appeal if he was also perceived to have completely lost his connection to the street. Haring, on the other hand, was able to quite quickly develop both a signature and a brandable style that fit the needs of the gallery market but could also continue to be popularized throughout the urban landscape of New York; no one entirely cared that Haring was being sold in galleries because the work itself already embodied a kind of visual signature, through its use of simple colors and those ubiquitous black outlined figures, that functioned equally successfully on both

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the street and the gallery wall. The specifics of which artist broke through, or sold out, to galleries first, however, are less important than the groundswell of interest in graffiti as a potential art form—an interest perhaps best encapsulated by the 1984 exhibit Calligraffiti, curated by Jeffrey Deitch and held at Leila Heller Gallery.6 The exhibit, which was reprised in 2013, reflected a prescient recognition on the part of Heller and Deitch of both the emergent power of street art and, importantly for this study, the potent visual connections between American street art, abstract expressionism, and calligraphic works by artists from the Middle East. Although the term “calligraffiti” in current usage refers to a specific visual style of street art, in Deitch’s original construct the word had a more fluid meaning, encompassing not only the work produced on train cars and subway stations but also meditative, small-scale works by Persian calligraphers and paintings by artists such as Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly. For Deitch and Heller, it is the intersection of word and image that inspired the original show and that they sought to update in the 2013 version. That intersection could be intentional as in the works of artists such as Basquiat and Haring from the early days and contemporary work by eL Seed and L’Atlas, or it could be found in an elusive visual affinity in works by artists such as Pollock, Twombly, and Hans Hartung. By including works by modernist artists from the Middle East, such as Iranian painter Hossein Zenderoudi, Deitch and Heller seek to expand the boundaries of the recent show to encourage a dialogue about the connection between Middle Eastern and Western art that goes beyond graffiti or calligraphic roots. Of course, by staging the updated exhibition in 2013, the backdrop of the Arab Spring, with its associated connections to street art, added a new dimension to the exhibition, albeit one not entirely removed from the political and social unrest present in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In any event, in its original iteration in 1984 and again in the 2013 revisiting of the works and themes, the Calligraffiti exhibition represents an important example of the intersections between graffiti, or street art, and commercial fine art spaces. Lynn Powers suggests, however, that initial attention to the nascent street art movement on the part of commercial galleries and art patrons was fleeting. In her 1996 article, “Whatever Happened to the Graffiti Art Movement?,” Powers summarizes the evolution of graffiti as an art movement, its embrace (or co-optation) by the New York art world, and its subsequent fade into irrelevance. She focuses on the 1970s and 1980s; however, arguably, a similar rise in popularity and art-market appropriation is occurring with contemporary street art in the 2000s. Powers attributes the public awareness of graffiti writing

Introduction

5

as a subculture to a 1971 article in the New York Times featuring a profile of Taki 183, a Manhattan teenager celebrated as the first well-known (among his peers) tagger in the city.7 From Taki’s early tags around his neighborhood grew a thriving subculture in which graffiti writers vied with each other to “get up” (write their tags) in the most inaccessible and dangerous locations. During the early 1970s, the simpler tags evolved into large murals (pieces); however, unlike in contemporary street art, the artist’s name (tag) was always the primary subject. As the graffiti subculture grew, it gained associations with gang culture as well as with the emerging hip-hop movement. Concurrently, the works were discovered by art critics and gallerists and the artists were transported from the streets to the galleries. Critics such as Norman Mailer and Lawrence Alloway and gallerists such as Sidney Janis sought to situate graffiti within an art historical lineage in which it served as the logical next step from the pop art of the 1960s.8 Yet, the initial love from the market was not sustained—a loss of interest perhaps engendered by the fact that “few [graffitists] altered their styles to correspond to the art community’s standards.”9 Consequently, the aesthetics and formal characteristics of graffiti art were rarely discussed, as they could not be situated within the norms of contemporary art practice, or, once situated, came up short.10 Importantly, Powers notes that the graffiti art works were marketed on their “novelty” rather than their aesthetics: “In most cases the work’s popularity was based more on the novelty of being produced by poor minority criminals than on any intrinsic artistic value.”11 Can the same be said of contemporary street art produced in conflict areas of the Middle East? Is value ascribed to the work solely by virtue of its association with what is perceived in the West as both a dangerous and a desired fight for democratic principles? Much in the same way that gallerists and patrons in Manhattan in the 1970s and 1980s saw graffiti art as a window into the world of the street, do Western viewers see street art as a window into the unknown culture and politics of the Middle East? By extension, are such viewers as unable to translate (literally and figuratively) these contemporary works of street art as were the New York critics and audiences of the earlier graffiti art? Will street art in the Middle East at some point cease to have cultural valence and impact beyond the countries in which it was and is produced? The tension between street art as actually practiced on the streets and as exhibited and sold in commercial galleries has continued to divide artists, and the division is sometimes coded linguistically as a distinction between those who consider their work to be graffiti and those who prefer the term “street art.”

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For the sake of consistency and because the term “street art” has supplanted “graffiti” in recent critical and popular discourse on the topic, I have opted to use the former in this book, with the exception of references to works by other scholars, critics, or artists where graffiti is used as the nomenclature of choice or where the image under discussion is clearly a tag rather than an artistic expression. Nonetheless, it is useful to bear in mind that the distinction, and tension, between the two descriptors retains its significance even today among some practitioners and critics.

Street art style in the Middle East Typographer and graphic designer Pascal Zoghbi and graffiti writer Stone, aka Don Karl, have been instrumental in introducing and promoting the practice of what they term “Arabic graffiti.” Their 2011 book of the same title brings together extensive photo documentation as well as critical essays and artists’ statements exploring this diverse and rapidly expanding form of visual expression in the Middle East. Although the authors and their contributors discuss some work that does not include Arabic script in its design, the focus of the book is on street art that relies on either Arabic letters or calligraphy to convey at least part of its message. Although not all the work considered in this volume is produced in the style of Arabic graffiti, the phenomenon is pervasive and significant enough that it merits consideration at the outset of the discussion.12 Karl and Zoghbi’s book was originally published in early 2011, just as the uprisings of the Arab Spring were beginning in Tunisia and Egypt. Recognizing that the revolutionary street art produced during these movements would reshape the direction of Arabic graffiti, the authors brought out a revised edition in 2013 that took account of some of the impact of the events of 2011 on the street art of the Middle East. However, the strong culture of Arabic graffiti that existed in countries such as Lebanon, Iran, and Palestine prior to 2011 meant that, despite the association of the Arab Spring with the birth of street art in the Middle East, not everything changed after that moment. As Karl notes in his preface to the 2013 edition, “The new political dimension of Arabic graffiti was already slightly touched on in the original edition . . . we added a chapter about the graffiti of the Arab uprisings and revised the chapter about graffiti in Bahrain, because of the grave changes that took place in that country. All other chapters, a collective testimony to a special moment in the history of Arabic graffiti, remained in their original versions.”13

Introduction

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And what was that “special moment in the history of Arabic graffiti”? For Karl and Zoghbi, it was the emergence of a wave of Arabic graffiti that specifically incorporated and at times celebrated traditional Arabic script, including calligraphic script. As a Lebanese typographer, Zoghbi was inspired by the handwritten messages on the temporary wooden walls that, during a mass demonstration in 2005, surrounded Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square. The type family Zoghbi developed based on that writing, Massira, included spray as a form, reflecting the connection between urban writing (or graffiti) and the typeface.14 Zoghbi’s interest in documenting the graffiti scene in Beirut ultimately led to the collaboration with Karl that was the genesis for their book. Their exploration is wide ranging, including examples as diverse as calligraphic street signs and truck decorations, political slogans, the elegant calligraffiti practiced by artists such as eL Seed, Arabic graffiti created by light, and 3-D Arabic graffiti. While not all of their examples might be considered street art, they share a fascination with the public presentation of a traditional artistic and sacred form of expression. As Huda AbiFarès writes in her introduction to the history of Arabic script, the Arabic language “was adopted . . . as a visible cultural allegiance to the Islamic faith. The Arabic language became a unifying cultural force, and its visual representation through calligraphy became the supreme artistic achievement of Islamic art.”15 Given this vital link between Arabic script and the religious and aesthetic traditions of Islam, it is important to consider the visual impact of street art featuring Arabic script or calligraphy, rather than English text, in the social and political context of the Middle East. The choice says a great deal about who is the intended recipient of the artwork’s message and about the artist’s desire to foreground Arab or Islamic culture and tradition. In the street art produced during the Arab Spring, the use of English for slogans and captions might be read as a desire for the work to be seen and easily interpreted by an international audience; it might also be read as a desire to engage with Western ideals of democracy and civil liberties through the use of the lingua franca of Western nations. Though English is becoming the lingua franca of most of the developing world, including the Middle East itself, the language choice might also reflect a desire to connect with a more local, yet polyglot, society. However, the use of Arabic in street art, revolutionary art or otherwise, in the Middle East, carries different and multivalent meanings. As mentioned above, the choice can connect the contemporary street art to a long-standing linguistic and religious tradition that forms the basis for a shared Islamic culture across the Middle East and beyond. It also serves as a dividing line, rendering some works of street art only visually, but not textually, accessible to many viewers, particularly those

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outside the region. Such viewers may assume that any Arabic script, whether fully legible or abstracted, included in a work of street art carries an important message that is obscured for them. However, the artist eL Seed calls that idea into question with his work This Is Just a Phrase in Arabic, painted as a mural in Los Angeles in 2011 and shown again in a small-scale canvas version at the 2013 Calligraffiti show at Leila Heller Gallery. The title of the work, which translates the painted Arabic, is meant to call into question the potential, if not probable, assumptions that Western or non-Arab viewers bring to their encounters with any work using Arabic script. These may include the presumption that the text is religious, political, or potentially subversive. Sometimes, however, a phrase is just a phrase; eL Seed’s work in this instance functions as a joke that only those in the know can interpret and enjoy. There is an element of surrealism here as one thinks back to René Magritte’s 1929 painting The Treachery of Images, in which the artist painted the text “Ceci n’est pas un pipe” (This is not a pipe) under the image of a pipe. Magritte’s painting explores the complex relationship between representation and reality; eL Seed’s work calls into question the connection between perception and reality. The idea of confounding or excluding certain viewers through the adoption of Arabic language in street art may also suggest an element of empowerment, of seeking political and social agency, through the work of these artists. By embracing the cultural resonance and historical significance of Arabic text, street artists in the Middle East are owning their political and social realities, even in the face of violence, corruption, and unrest. In revolutionary street art, the use of Arabic suggests an ability to solve problems internally, without the intervention of Western or other external forces; in less politically charged works, it suggests a claim to the physical and emotional spaces of the Middle East that have been so often invaded from outside. Arabic text as a visual and linguistic strategy can place the street art of the Middle East in a specifically localized and emotionally charged context.

Street art versus public art Graffiti is hardwired into society. People have a natural impulse to leave their mark on public property, to tell the world they were here, and perhaps, what they think about it. Historically, graffiti serves many purposes. Victors of war have used it as territorial markers and gangs to stake out their turf. Politicians use it to spread their ideology, while subversives use it to talk back to authorities without fear of reproach. Advertisers promote their products and criminals their

Introduction

9

unlawful services with graffiti. Lovers immortalize their devotion. The dislocated and alienated claim a sense of place. And artists gain a public audience. At its most basic level, graffiti is an affirmation of our own being; it is an announcement that “I was here.”16

Most, if not all, of this description by Kristine Somerville of the uses of graffiti (and by extension of street art) in society applies to the Middle East. Some uses are more prevalent than others and of more interest to this study. Yet, the concept of graffiti as “hardwired” into society is compelling, particularly in a region which saw the development of graffiti in its ancient cultures and its continued practice as a way of marking presence (of armies, kings, and tourists) on the monuments of the region. Today, we are less focused on the scribbles and scrawls found throughout these locations or on the graffiti tags that can be found even in the most policed of Middle Eastern countries, than on the public works of street art that have accompanied the revolutions of the Arab Spring as well as subsequent political upheaval and change. When one hears the terms “street art” and “Middle East,” images of Cairo in 2011 or the separation barrier between Palestine and Israel are most likely what first spring to mind. Yet, as Somerville’s list reminds us, the graffiti and street art of the Middle East comes from a more varied set of aims and desires among those who create it and it is that wider set of aims that forms a part of this book. There will be substantial consideration given to the more well-known, politicized street art; yet, it is helpful to acknowledge that the visual marking of the street is not, in the Middle East or anywhere else, confined to politics. The question of the varied modalities of street art, ranging from large-scale public murals to works on canvas produced specifically for commercial galleries, to co-branded creations between street artists and major companies will also be considered. The existence of such varied modalities or venues for what might still be termed street art (or at least street-inspired art) gives rise to questions of a value hierarchy: Is one mode of production privileged over another? Are the rough and sometimes aesthetically unsophisticated revolutionary murals less valued than the cultured and slick productions of artists working with major fashion houses? Which is worth more—the work produced on the street or street work that is repurposed to fit a more saleable canvas? In financial terms, it is definitely the work for sale in the gallery, as the original on the street has, most likely, no monetary value at all. Unless, perhaps, that work on the street was commissioned by a developer for their new shopping mall, with a tidy fee paid to the street artist. If a print of the same piece is sold in a gallery, it takes on the characteristics of a souvenir, worth a fraction of the

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Street Art in the Middle East

real piece, in the same way that visitors to the Louvre pick up postcards and tote bags featuring priceless works of art such as Mona Lisa. The question of the placement and associated commodification of street art will be considered further throughout the book. Sondra Bacharach emphasizes the aconsensual nature of street art production as the primary determinant of it its validity and of its distinction from public art.17 A second condition for the assignment of a work of art produced in public space to the category of street art is that it “constitutes an act of defiant activism designed to challenge (and change) the viewer’s experience of his or her environment.”18 Public art, on the other hand, is sanctioned by a private, institutional, governmental, or other authority and, as such, enjoys the protection of that authority during its production and term of display. Bacharach acknowledges that, like street art, public art may be impermanent, while, arguing, however, that a critical distinction between the two is the consensual nature of decisions about the work’s length of display in the case of public art. Bacharach uses the term “street art” to encompass a vast array of visual interventions in public space, ranging from traditional wheatpasting, stenciling, and mural painting to “guerrilla knitting” and “seed bombing.”19 Bacharach views such practices as examples of the ways that “street artists present an alternative way of experiencing the space around us and conceptualizing the role of public space . . . these artists re-conceive the public realm as one that is itself worthy of inhabiting, experiencing and enjoying.”20 While the idea of street artists reconceptualizing public space as a place of enjoyment may not immediately pertain to those artists working in the more politicized spaces of the Middle East, elements of Bacharach’s definition do seem appropriate to the work produced in these contexts. Bacharach views both graffiti and public art as interventions by outsiders that attempt to take over the space of the streets within a particular community. In the case of graffiti, these outsiders may be viewed as vandals; in the case of public art, their work is sanctioned, although only by impersonal private (sometimes commercial) or government entities and not by the residents of the streets themselves. Street art, on the other hand, can reflect a shared set of values and hopes for the community in which it appears, a status that seems appropriate to much political street art in the Middle East. Even if a space such as Tahrir Square cannot be defined as an urban community in any traditional sense of the term, it arguably functioned as such during the weeks of its occupation by protestors, allowing the street art produced there to fit the parameters described by Bacharach. Bacharach further develops the concept of a “defiant and activist character” as a condition for the

Introduction

11

assignment of a work of public visual production to the category of street art. In a Western context, she sometimes has to expand the category of what might be typically considered “activism,” noting that “street art can be risky and defiant simply in virtue of how it is made and where it is made, even if the actual content, meanings or interpretations are totally innocuous, innocent, apolitical, amoral and asocial.”21 Like Bacharach, Nicholas Riggle attempts a definition of street art that is constructed in part through its opposition to categories of “mere” (as opposed to “artistic”) graffiti and of public art.22 This definition includes three main requirements for a work to be considered street art: the “material requirement” that art must use the street as a resource in order to qualify as street art (note that this requirement is complicated by the fact that “street as resource” does not imply that the work has to reside in the street to qualify as street art), a commitment to “ephemerality” on the part of the artist, and the “immaterial” requirement that the use of the street is integral to the meaning of the work of art.23 In further developing this argument, Riggle contends with the nature of public space as a proper and necessary setting for street art: “A public space is the street only if it is the object of a certain constellation of attitudes, including the belief that the space is primarily for the public.”24 In his dismissal of the street art festival as a legitimate space for the creation of street art, Rafael Schacter echoes Riggle’s concerns about the limitations of a space that is specifically designated for artistic purposes—even if those purposes include the creation of street art. In both Riggle’s and Schacter’s view, the space of the street art festival does not constitute the public space of the street and, as such, art produced in that space does not, to follow Riggle’s line of reasoning, meet the “immaterial” criteria (nor, perhaps, the “material” criteria) for the determination of a work as street art.25 Riggle briefly addresses the question of whether street art can be critiqued through the formalist principles embodied in the work of modernist critics such as Clement Greenberg. In Riggle’s view, such an exclusively formalist critique of street art is impossible given its material use of the street in constructing its meaning. According to Riggle, “This [the material use of the street] violates the formalist principle of aesthetic autonomy, that to appreciate a work of art the critic must attend to its aesthetic features alone.”26 While I accept Riggle’s premise that the connection of street art to the physical, public space of the street cannot be ignored in any critique of the work, I suggest that such critique would benefit from the application of formalist principles, indeed of a formalist approach to art criticism, which is virtually absent from any discussion of contemporary street art. To the extent that traditional formalist and aesthetic consideration

12

Street Art in the Middle East

such as visual style are discussed in relation to street art, they are generally used solely for the purpose of identifying an artist rather than for any evaluation of a work’s aesthetic qualities. And yet, taken as a visual medium which follows (or breaks) principles of design, composition, form, and so on, street art must be considered on an aesthetic continuum in which some works of art are more formally successful than others. This is not to render insignificant all work that does not succeed on a formalist critique but rather to suggest that such a critique can be usefully employed in a more sophisticated analysis of street art as an art form.

Street art and politics In a brief essay written in the shadow of the Arab Spring, Blake Gopnik posits that graffiti, as both a visual style and a performative act, has lost its meaning in the West but has been taken up in the Middle East as a true and visceral means of political expression. As do many others, Gopnik argues that when graffiti was brought into the art gallery in the 1980s, it became an empty cipher, no longer the vibrant and critical voice of an underclass making its mark on the city. As such, graffiti has, in Gopnik’s view, become “an empty visual commodity in the West.” Its association with the commercial and cultured space of the gallery or museum has robbed graffiti of its gritty, urban roots. In visual terms, the street art aesthetic has become immediately recognizable and has been placed in a certain category of “urban art” rather than existing outside the conceptual and market frames of the contemporary art world. By describing graffiti as a “visual commodity,” rather than as a visual medium of expression, Gopnik explicitly links graffiti or street art’s aesthetics to the demands of the market; as an “empty visual commodity,” street art in a Western context is seen as devoid of the social and political relevance that it still holds elsewhere. While this claim has gained currency in various critiques of the street art scene in the West, I believe it is too reductive both in condemning all Western street art as selling out to commercialism and in implying that no non-Western street artist has done the same. The reality on the ground is much more nuanced and complicated in both directions. Gopnik believes that while street art in the West has lost its sense of urgency and critical relevance, at the same time it is “serv[ing] the needs of the rest of the world’s peoples,”27 contending that in trouble spots around the globe, “graffiti is being used as a true means of communication rather than as purely aesthetic exchange.”28 He is particularly interested in the way that the

Introduction

13

immediately recognizable style of the pieces painted across subway cars in New York in the 1970s and 1980s—the colorful, rounded, almost cloud-like letters spelling out someone’s tag—has been appropriated in locations as diverse as Nicaragua and Libya as the medium for expressing political protest. In Gopnik’s words, “The static language of the American ‘piece’ has moved on to a second life as the visual lingua franca of genuine political speech.”29 Although not all, perhaps not even most, of the political graffiti or street art in the Middle East relies on this particular, American-influenced style to convey its message, the overarching concept remains valid: the graffiti that lost its subversive and antagonistic intent when appropriated by the art world has regained its street cred in global protest movements. Whether temporary or permanent, street art is, fundamentally, a form of public art. As such, it necessarily reflects and responds both to the spatial environment of its creation and to the perceptions and responses of the public that views it. Any art historian analyzing artwork produced in a culture other than their own necessarily brings to that analysis a set of predetermined expectations, possibly even stereotypes, about the physical, social, and psychological factors that influence the production and reception of works of art in a foreign environment. This subjectivity is present whether the art historian is discussing artwork that is centuries or days old; the product of Renaissance Europe or modern Asia; or the province of the state or of the individual. It is the responsibility of the art historian to set aside, to the extent possible, the subjective and personal lens, or framework, through which the work of art is initially viewed in order to place him or herself as nearly as possible into the world of the creators and original viewers of these works of art. The complete absorption into this other world is, of course, impossible. Nonetheless, the pursuit of this goal enhances the ability of the art historian to successfully interrogate the work of art as a marker of a particular social, historical, political, and even economic context. In so doing, the art historian reads the visual evidence in such a way that he or she can interpret, or translate, that evidence for an audience that remains ensconced in its own subjectivity. Of all the possible cultural frameworks that can complicate the encounter between an art historian and a work of art, that of an American or European viewing the art, perhaps especially the contemporary art, of the Middle East is certainly one of the most complicated and fraught. Despite the recent increase in interest in the contemporary art of the Middle East on the part of dealers, museums, and private collectors in the United States and Europe, there remains a great cultural divide between the Western viewers and critics of such work

14

Street Art in the Middle East

and their Middle Eastern creators. This divide is exacerbated by the pervasive lack of knowledge of the history, whether distant or recent, of the Middle East on the part of Western audiences. Even the geography of the region may not be immediately understood. For most citizens of the United States and Europe, the Middle East is characterized by politicians and the press as a homogeneous region wracked by decades, even centuries, of internal and external conflict. The long-standing conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis serves, particularly in the United States, as the primary index of this unrest; however, the “war against terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian civil war and the attendant refugee crisis have provided additional support for the vision of a Middle East torn apart by sectarian violence that is difficult, if not impossible, for a Western onlooker to fully comprehend.30 When I moved to the Middle East in 2014, I became painfully aware of my own ignorance, even as a well-educated, liberal American, of the history and contemporary realities of my new home. When I began the project of writing this book, I realized quickly that in order to effectively analyze works of street art in the Middle East, I needed to gain at least a cursory knowledge of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century history of the region, particularly of those countries on which I intended to focus my attention.31 As I do not read Arabic, my knowledge is still largely framed by a Western perspective; however, I have, to the extent possible, sought out sources written by scholars, journalists, and others who have spent substantial time in the Middle East and who generally try to understand and explain its history from the perspective of those who live in the region rather than from the outside looking in.32 I have attempted in each chapter to summarize the critical elements in the recent history of the country or city under discussion, particularly those which I feel are most relevant to the art I am examining. These summaries are, of course, limited and incomplete; however, I believe that, particularly for readers who are approaching this material with little knowledge of the region’s history and current concerns, they provide a valuable guide to the political context in which street art is created.

Spaces of the Middle East Urban space in the Middle East functions in multiple ways simultaneously. Public yet private, open yet controlled, its identity is specific to this region and different than that of public spaces in the United States and Europe, for example. In London, Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park reflects a long-standing

Introduction

15

tradition of setting aside specific space for public discourse and debate, even if such public speech might be used to try to turn people away from government policies or positions. In America, this tradition is framed figuratively in the First Amendment of the US Constitution and literally in the space of the Mall in Washington, DC, which has served as the rallying point for marches on issues ranging from civil rights, to a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion, to anti-Trump protests. A space within the heart of the nation’s capital can be used to advocate for political and social change that is opposed by the current government. This type of public challenge to the ruling party, whether an ostensibly elected leader or a royal family, is all but unheard of in the Middle East; or, at least, it is understood to be an action taken only with a recognition of the grave consequences that will be faced by those speaking out. On a much more mundane, but nonetheless significant, level, public space in the Middle East can be limited, or directed, not only by the political environment but also by the climate. In several of the areas discussed in this book, where temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees Celsius for five or six months of the year, public space is necessarily indoor space. In the Gulf region, these indoor public spaces are the massive shopping malls that serve as spaces not only for buying and selling goods but also for dining, entertainment, and social engagement. While, of course, malls serve these purposes throughout the world, they do seem to have a unique cultural dominance in the region. Street art culture to date seems not to have inserted itself in any significant way into the space of enclosed malls, though it certainly exists in open-air malls throughout the region. How long will it be, however, before the space of the street merges with the space of the mall through art in the same way that the European culture of sidewalk cafés is replicated in the Dubai Mall? That the characteristics of urban spaces in the Middle East contribute to the specific style and placement of street art in the region is clear. How, then, does the erasure of street art say as much about its presence and impact as its first appearance, even as it is replaced by sanitized and positive images? In some cases the locations of original works have been totally obliterated, while in others it is the art itself that has been removed, even as the spaces remain. While such an absence might initially be seen as disappointing, the analysis of these empty, yet powerfully resonant, locations of past conflict nonetheless provide a useful backdrop for understanding artwork recorded by others at the time of its creation. To find the location of the political street art today in many of these cities, one has to hunt—to look between the walls, finding leftover traces of a moment when street art spoke to and reacted against powerful political realities.

16

Street Art in the Middle East

I was fortunate to be able to visit most of the locations that are discussed in the following chapters and, even though the street art I am discussing was not always still present, I had the opportunity to see firsthand the physical, generally urban, landscape in which the art was produced and displayed, which has proven invaluable to my understanding of the effect the works must have had on their original (and subsequent) viewers. Understanding the ways in which the street artists would have worked to create their pieces—whether placed on large, open walls; hidden beneath highway underpasses; located on commercial or government buildings or plastered on tight surfaces such as lampposts or electrical boxes—sheds light on the choices of medium as well as on the visual impact of the work. I was able to see what other buildings and, in some cases, monuments or public artworks surrounded the locations of the street art. I could better understand the traffic patterns, both pedestrian and vehicular, that would have determined how viewers approached the works. And I was able to gain a feel for the mood or tenor of each location, which, even if substantially changed from the moment of the artworks’ creation, nonetheless reflect something of the character of each city and its people. The vanished street art in the Middle East has, in some cases, been extensively documented while the works were still new and physically dominant. While this study will rely on such documentation to analyze the placement and visual style of these works, it will also consider the ways in which absent street art still impacts the urban environment of cities such as Cairo, Beirut, and Manama. This is not a comprehensive survey of the street art of the Middle East. A vast amount of work has been produced recently in the region and the continued pace and volume of the creation of contemporary street art is such that no one volume could attempt to capture all of it. Rather, this book explores particular instances and sites of street art within a larger political and social context. Discussions of the work of a particular artist or collective are not intended to catalogue their full oeuvre but to highlight work that fits—or sometimes breaks—certain strategies of representation that have become common in the recent street art of the region. The physical space of the street art discussed is of critical importance in understanding its impact. It is useful to know the general layout of each location and to situate the works discussed within specific neighborhoods and urban contexts. Many of the sites examined are divided territory, whether literally, as in the case of Israel and Palestine, or metaphorically as in the case of Cairo. The flashy and innovative urban architecture and streetscapes of Dubai cause the street art produced there to function very differently than that found in the

Introduction

17

tumbledown island of Djerba in war-torn Tunisia or in the chaotic and crowded neighborhoods of Tehran. The subtitle of this book, “Place, Politics and Visual Style,” is meant to convey not only its contents but also something of its organization. That is, the street art of each city or country is approached through the lenses of political history, spatial organization, and aesthetic and formal qualities. These facets, of course, intertwine and impact each other and, as such, the discussions of them are not always linear. There is already extensive literature on some of the locations discussed in the book; in such cases, what is offered here is a more integrated and historically grounded perspective on the street art produced since the Arab Spring of 2011. While this art is a product of and is shaped by the particular moment of its creation, there are also links, both conscious and unconscious, to a broader politics of the region. In countries such as Oman and the UAE, where armed conflict and internal protests have been rare occurrences, historical and recent politics are still germane to the development of street art in those areas. The relative stability of many Gulf countries (with Bahrain as a notable exception) has created an environment in which street art serves first and foremost as a visual and design strategy and only secondarily, if at all, as a source of social and political commentary. If I spend what may seem a large amount of time summarizing the history and current political climate of a country or city, it is because, as I conducted my research, I realized that the ways in which street art in the Middle East has largely been discussed are too isolated and simplistic. The patterns of conflict and connection between the countries and societies considered here are complex and frame the historical as well as the current spaces in which the work is produced. Even if the artists discussed are generally of a younger generation that may not have personally witnessed specific historical moments, such as the Lebanese civil war or the Six-Day War between Israel and Palestine in 1967, these are historical moments and events that have indelibly shaped the landscape in which these artists are working, both physically and psychologically, and to ignore or gloss over them would evade a significant influence on contemporary cultural production. This influence may not always be visually identifiable or acknowledged by the contemporary artists, but it is impossible to visit the sites of contemporary street art production and not feel that it is still present. This historical presence exists not only in obviously war-torn regions such as Lebanon, Tunisia, or Palestine but also in those countries, notably in the Gulf, which have largely escaped conflict but are nonetheless shaped by the historical artifacts of their recent and rapid

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Street Art in the Middle East

ascendance as oil-producing, wealthy, and powerful states. Prosperity as well as strife can influence the landscape in which contemporary street art is produced and received. Collective as well as individual memories are a powerful force in this production and reception, whether these memories are positive or negative, real or culturally constructed. While the points of comparison used in this book focus on differences between street art in the Middle East and that created in Europe and the United States, it is important to note that there is a growing street art movement throughout the world, including in other politically unstable regions and in developing countries. Particularly in Southeast Asia, a region that is increasingly becoming linked to the Middle East in recent scholarship as well as in the art world, countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, and India are seeing an increase in street art activity. In the Philippines, this work is produced for reasons of cultural tourism and city beautification and also as a statement about social and political realities in the country.33 In Indonesia, a country with a longer tradition of political graffiti extending back to the mid-twentieth century, street artists remain more focused on political causes, including the 1998 overthrow of President Muhammad Suharto, a populist and largely student-led revolution that prefigured those of the Arab Spring.34 In India, the St+Art India Foundation is a nonprofit, but government-endorsed, organization whose aims are to “make public spaces more vibrant and interactive for the people who use them the most, and to make art more democratic as a medium.”35 The group is active in several cities around the country and has seen great success in using street art to engage communities in the revitalization of urban landscapes. These diverse uses of street art are reflected in countries throughout the world, including many Third World countries, and are also among the primary motivations for the creation of street art in the Middle East. Finally, a note about the many references to Banksy throughout this book. While there are certainly many other street artists active in the West and using stenciling as their preferred medium,36 the pseudonymous British street artist Banksy is clearly the best-known and most influential street artist in the Middle East and thus an important cultural reference point for the artists discussed here. Banksy has become a cultural phenomenon in the two decades or so since he emerged onto the art scene in the 1990s. His well-crafted, stenciled works of street art provide satirical commentary on contemporary politics and social issues, or just on life itself, in ways that are somewhat enigmatic, leaving the viewer to complete their meaning. The themes explored in his work appear to resonate with Middle Eastern artists and viewers, and, from a practical

Introduction

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standpoint, stenciling—in which the template used for a piece can be prepared off site and the actual painting of the work done fairly quickly—proved useful in situations where street artists were risking not only arrest but perhaps their lives to produce their works. The fact that many street artists in the Middle East became exposed to the medium through the internet, particularly vehicles such as YouTube and Facebook, also raised Banksy’s profile in the region, as he is one of the most discussed street artists online and his works have been shared millions of times. That many emergent street artists in the region are dubbed the “Banksy” of their country (the Banksy of Syria, the Banksy of Egypt, the Banksy of Iraq, and so on) is further testimony to the artist’s reach; even local media writing about local artists reach for Banksy as a reference point to explain a street artist’s popularity and reach. Thus, although the prominence of a British artist may seem strange for a book on the Middle East, the shadow cast by Banksy in the region is long enough that his influence, and at times, actual presence, must be carefully considered.

1

Egypt: Revolutionary Street Art in Cairo

The street art produced in Egypt, particularly in Cairo, during the January 25, 2011, revolution has received more attention than that produced in other countries during the Arab Spring. This may be due, in part, to the fact that Egypt was relatively accessible to outsiders shortly after the revolution and to the fact that a number of Egyptian scholars and journalists have themselves chosen to comment on the street art produced at that time. The attention may also stem from the novelty of the street art that emerged during the revolution. As Mia Gröndahl writes in her book Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt, prior to the revolution, “The Egyptian youth didn’t write without permission on public surfaces. The wide spectrum of street art—individual tags, stencils, pieces, and murals—that usually belong to an urban landscape, had escaped Cairo.”1 Gröndahl goes on to quote Egyptian street artist El Teneen on his experience of the opening up of public spaces to visual forms of comment and protest: It was the first day we actually took control of the [Tahrir] Square. There was a large portrait of Mubarak, and Ganzeer sprayed “Down with Mubarak” on it, something I had always wanted to do; and after that we continued to put our mark on the walls around the Square. The protesters hadn’t seen graffiti before; the idea of writing something in a public space was new, but they liked it.2

Lina Khatib notes that the use of street art in the January 25 revolution was particularly significant in that it “made visual expression a key tool in political protest, catalysing the use of street art in other revolutions that followed in the Arab world, such as in Libya and Syria.”3 The images have various subjects and references: political leaders, martyrs of the revolution, democracy and voting, gender rights, and more. Entire books can, and have, been written about the street art of the Egyptian revolution, notably Basma Hamdy and Don Karl’s extraordinary compilation of essays and photographs, Walls of Freedom. Rather than attempting a comprehensive overview of the movement, this book opens

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Street Art in the Middle East

with a brief review of some of the key examples of Egyptian revolutionary street art that pertain to the street art produced in other, less studied, countries in the Middle East and thus serve as a fitting introduction to the topic of street art in the region.

Development of street art styles in Cairo The street art that emerged in Cairo at the time of the revolution can be categorized by style as well as by theme or subject. Styles included simple stenciled works that functioned almost as logos, free-form paintings that often occupied large surfaces, and text-only works that looked more like the traditional tags found in urban locations throughout the world. Some artists and protestors also adopted the poster and sticker technique popularized in the United States by Shepard Fairey; these artists sometimes directly copied Fairey’s designs, including his signature “Obey Giant” character. Aesthetically speaking, not all of the street art is very good, but it is important as a record of the struggle for political change as well as the development of an artistic genre that had previously been virtually absent from the visual culture of contemporary Egypt. Some of the street art referenced historical Egyptian motifs, such as King Tutankhamen and ancient tomb paintings, while other images seemed to go in their own direction; these often-expansive and complex murals are reminiscent in scope, if not skill, of works created by Mexican muralists of the mid-twentieth century. Artists such as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siquieros, and, most famously, Diego Rivera created large, complex murals in both their home country of Mexico and abroad that explored themes of nationalism, industrialization, and socialism on a grand scale. Like much of the revolutionary street art in Cairo, these murals are colorful paintings incorporating political and social messages through the representation of well-known persons as well as figural types, such as the soldier or the peasant. Representations of class struggle were not uncommon, as in José Clemente Orozco’s Destruction of the Old Order (1926), painted in the National Preparatory School, in which two peasants turn away from the viewer to watch the collapse of neoclassical buildings representative of the colonial past from which the repressed poor of Mexico will escape with the founding of a new order. Not only stylistic similarities, but also thematic connections to Egyptian street art can be seen in works such as this, in which the artist uses symbolic visual language to both critique the status quo and anticipate a better moment ahead. That there are shared political and social

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23

concerns between the moment of Mexico’s popular liberation and that of the Egyptian uprising makes the link between the two forms of visual expression more salient.4 Before examining some of the more visually and thematically complex works of revolutionary street art in Cairo, it is useful to consider another less technically and conceptually complicated but nonetheless effective medium: stenciling. Two particularly compelling examples of the effective use of stencils in Cairene street art are the recurrent motif of the blue bra and the image of Nefertiti wearing a gas mask, found in stencils as well as on stickers and posters. As the journalist Soraya Morayef has noted, a number of street artists in Cairo, both men and women, used their work to focus specifically on issues of women’s rights and to condemn violence against women in the Egyptian society.5 One of the iconic images of such violence that emerged from the Tahrir Square protests is that of the so-called “girl in the blue bra,” the female protestor whose beating at the hands of military police was documented in video and still photographs. The blue bra rapidly emerged as a symbol for street artists, a kind of shorthand reminder of the brutality of the regime, particularly of its mistreatment of women. In some works, the blue bra itself was simply stenciled as a stand-alone signifier of both a particular act of violence and the systemic inequities faced by Egyptian women. In others, artists used a freehand style to represent the act of beating as captured in the most widely circulated photos of the event. The freehand works are embedded in a style of Egyptian revolutionary graffiti, one that exhibits a more narrative quality. The stenciled works, however, have affinities with an internationally recognized street art style in terms of both their creative presentation and their reliance on a single motif to make a point. The most famous creator of stenciled street art is Banksy, the pseudonymous English street artist who has become a cultural phenomenon since he emerged onto the scene in the 1990s. His well-crafted, stenciled works of street art provide satirical commentary on contemporary politics and social issues, or just on life itself, in ways that are somewhat enigmatic, leaving the viewer to complete their meaning. Banksy’s works are known worldwide and have helped to popularize stenciling as a style for street art, particularly in contexts where artists wish to remain anonymous and to quickly produce images in multiple locations throughout a city. Although many of Banksy’s stencils are themselves large, multi-subject works, the artist’s anonymity and reputation for stenciling in unexpected locations resonates with the methods and goals of many revolutionary street artists, not just in Egypt but in other locations in the Middle East and beyond. Stencil is also a medium that requires little, if any, artistic skill and can thus

24

Street Art in the Middle East

be picked up by anyone wishing to utilize a visual language in the service of promoting social or political messages. The celebrated Egyptian street artist and graphic designer Mohamed Fahmy, who goes by the name Ganzeer, published a stencil booklet on his blog, designed to offer as many people as possible an easyto-use mechanism for producing stencils throughout the city, the very ubiquity of the images serving to amplify the messages they sought to convey.6 As the stencils proliferated, they would often overlap each other and other works of street art, such as murals, creating a visual analogy to the often-chaotic physical spaces of Cairo during the months of revolutionary activity. The popularity of the stencil as a street art medium could be seen throughout the city, as more and more images were designed and repeated during the months and even years after Mubarak’s ouster. Stencils were appropriated and updated over and over again to form a continued commentary on the changes in Egyptian politics post revolution, although their presence has been substantially muted under the authoritarian regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi which has cracked down on most forms of visual political expression through street art. In addition to stencils, protestors in Cairo gravitated toward stickers as an easily reproducible medium for plastering the streets with slogans and images. Like stencils, stickers could be used by anyone and deployed in locations that, through their inaccessibility or dangerous nature, were unsuitable even for spraypainted stencils. Again, Ganzeer features prominently in accounts of the power of stickers as street art during the revolution when he was arrested after posting one of his Mask of Freedom stickers on a lamppost; the artist was released later that day, a move that was likely prompted by the widespread public outcry at his detention. The image itself shows the head and torso of a stylized superhero, his face covered in a mask with a gag that looks like, and undoubtedly functions as, a torture device. The text (in Arabic) reads: “New! THE MASK OF FREEDOM! Salutations from the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to sons of the beloved nation. Now available for an unlimited period of time.” Within a day of Ganzeer’s arrest and release, the image was to be found throughout Cairo, in its original sticker form, on t-shirts, and on posters. In a reflection on the incident written in 2017, Ganzeer suggests that the internet, with its ability to endlessly reproduce and disseminate both images and ideas, still does not compare to the streets in terms of the ability of an image to serve as the galvanizing focus of a movement. As Ganzeer writes, There is great value in spreading ideas over the internet, even if these ideas remain represented in the digital dimension of the world. As long as these

Egypt: Revolutionary Street Art in Cairo

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ideas are exposed to people, these ideas will have great value. However, as soon as an idea takes on a more physical form, its impact on unsuspecting viewers enormously multiplies. This is apparent when comparing between the impact of the Mask of Freedom on May 19, when all I did was post it online, and its impact on May 26, when I decided to go down and take it to the streets.7

While Ganzeer, in this statement, appears to privilege the real space of the urban street over the virtual space of digital media as a site of public awareness and discourse, it is possible, as the art historian Chad Elias suggests, to construct a more nuanced view of the role played by street art in bridging these two spaces. As Elias posits, “Far from insisting on the simplistic division between so-called ‘real’ spaces of urban squares and the ‘unreal’ spaces of the ascendant digital media landscape, graffiti articulates a multi-layered practice of image politics that puts screen cultures into complex negotiation and self-reflexive appropriation with those of the street.”8 By connecting rather than distancing real and virtual space through their images, Egyptian street artists allow and even encourage multivalent readings of their works, even when those works employ the seemingly simplistic and unsophisticated visual strategies. In the same way that internet memes, in all their frequent banality, can quickly establish an overwhelming presence online, so, too, some of the most basically constructed street art creations assumed a presence that far outstripped their visual sophistication. Another image that was created in the rapidly deployable mediums of stickers and stencils, while also appearing on posters and clothing, is that of Nefertiti with a gas mask by the graffiti artist El Zeft. The work, first produced in September 2012, shows a seemingly simple subject that carries complex layers of meaning, both for its contemporary context and for its association with Egypt’s historical past. El Zeft himself intended the image as a comment on the important contributions made by Egyptian women during the January 25 revolution. He wrote on Facebook when the image was first shown: “A tribute to all women in our beloved Revolution. Without you we wouldn’t have gotten this far. Thank you.”9 The figure can be read as a symbol of Egyptian women’s resilience and commitment to the revolution, standing alongside the men of Tahrir and facing the same dangers, such as tear gas attacks. The graffiti image was then transferred to a poster format by the artist, who added symbolic spatters of blood to symbolize the assaults against women in Tahrir and beyond.10 Nefertiti’s position as a symbol of female strength is thus complicated by adding imagery alluding to women as victims of male aggression and sexual assault.

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As if emphasizing its initial motivation and impact, the image without the bloodstains was appropriated by activists for women’s rights in Egypt and other countries in the Arab world and beyond—for example, during demonstrations sponsored by Amnesty International in Berlin and South Korea in 2013. The specific choice of Nefertiti as the woman to feature in the work is an interesting one on the part of the artist. Of course, on one level, Nefertiti is simply one of the most recognizable female figures in Egyptian history, along with Cleopatra. Her features were immortalized by the artist Thutmose, whose sculpted portrait of the queen, undoubtedly highly idealized, is one of the glories of the Neues Museum in Berlin. Nefertiti herself was a complicated historical figure. As the wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten, she participated in the religious revolution in which the couple turned to the worship of only one god and many theories hold that she may have ruled Egypt as pharaoh at least for a brief period after her husband’s death. Thus, Nefertiti is associated with upending the religious, social, and political status quo of ancient Egypt, a position that may have commended her as a symbol for the revolutionary women of contemporary Egypt. The reality of women’s positions within the revolution and the discourse surrounding their representation and experience was a complicated one, as symbolized by a pair of stenciled images created by the artist Ammar Abo Bakr showing Aliaa El-Mahdy and Samira Ibrahim. El-Mahdy gained fame, or notoriety, for posting a nude photograph of herself on her blog; Ibrahim was one of the women forced to undergo a “virginity test” after her arrest in Tahrir Square. The stenciled image of El-Mahdy shows her posed as in the photograph online, but with a block of blue Arabic text covering her nude body. Only Ibrahim’s head is shown in the picture, wearing the hijab, she looks downward and does not make eye contact with the viewer; the Arabic text associated with her image is below the picture. The text associated with El-Mahdy references the millions of views her photo received as well as the attention from the news media; this is contrasted with Ibrahim’s text which declares that her lawsuit against the military doctor who conducted the virginity test received “no interest, no audience, no media.”11 By placing Ibrahim’s image in the street with El-Mahdy’s, Abo Bakr attempts to balance the representation and attention paid to the two women, whose experiences of the revolution are at opposite ends of a spectrum—one forcibly and unwillingly subjected to a sexual assault by authorities and the other choosing to bare herself in an act of self-defined protest. Like Nefertiti, they are both complicated figures who not only came to represent their own stories but acted as screens for the beliefs, prejudices, and values of those who viewed their images.

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Figure 1 Ammar Abo Bakr, Mural of Aliaa El-Mahdy and Samira Ibrahim. Photo credit: Gigi Ibrahim (Flickr: Women in the revolution) (CC BY 2.0 [https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0]), via Wikimedia Commons.

As the weeks of the revolution rolled by, a new form of street art began to appear and then proliferate in and around Tahrir Square: the poster. As art for a mobile and impermanent protest site, the poster has obvious advantages over wallbased street art. It is easier to make, less subject to vandalism and whitewashing by authorities, can be reproduced to provide cohesive visual symbols carrying defined revolutionary messages, and can be displayed in groups to give a stronger visual identity to a particular space or message. The posters created during the eighteen-day revolution served all these purposes. Some were hand-drawn and painted—unique objects that shared personal messages of anger, exhortation, or grief. Some were mass-produced, such as Ganzeer’s illustration signifying that Mubarak does not equal Egypt. Some were satirical in nature, such as those referring to Mubarak as the laughing cow used in the logo of a popular brand of cheese. Others commemorated the martyrs of the revolution. Written in both Arabic and English, the messages of the posters reached a global audience that, with the throttling of the internet by the Egyptian government, was eager for any visual evidence of the scale and nature of the protests. The Revolution Artists Union (RAU) was founded in Tahrir during the days of the revolution.12

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A group including visual artists, musicians, writers, actors, and others, the RAU produced its own posters that it exhibited in the square, notably on the front of a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet that served as an informal outside gallery. After the initial occupation of Tahrir disbanded, the artist collective continued a loose association that sponsored arts and culture events that encouraged Egyptian people to view and use art as a means of expression of diverse points of view, an expression that had been discouraged during years of autocracy. An early project could be considered street art: a display of images from the revolution in a Cairo subway station during May 2011. Consisting of photographs, drawings, paintings, and mixed-media work, the ad-hoc installation captured some of the excitement and energy of this unprecedented moment of public, visual expression of political criticism as well as of revolutionary ideals. Those participating in the exhibit as artists as well as viewers of the work had the sense, however fleeting, that they were engaged in a new freedom of artistic representation that would have been unfamiliar for most, if not all. The inclusion of images of martyrs of the revolution gave the exhibition a sense of historical and personal weight that its mundane location might have otherwise obscured. Through the co-optation of the commuter space of the busy Cairo metro, the artists of the RAU inserted their own political dialogue into the daily routine of people of Cairo. The artists continued their role in documenting and publicizing revolutionary sentiments when protestors returned to Tahrir in July of 2011 and have attempted, with uncertain success, to sustain their activities in various venues in the years since. Egypt in the mid-twentieth century, under the leadership of its president Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a great proponent of pan-Arabism, a political ideology that espouses the unification of Arab countries from the Persian Gulf across North Africa. While the movement saw its greatest support in the 1950s and 1960s, it has consistently failed to gain lasting traction in the region, arguably because sectarian, tribal, and political divides run too deep or, alternatively, because Israel, backed by its powerful ally, the United States, is too dominant a force in the region. Yet, in its revolutionary street art movement, Egypt once again stood forward as a unifying force in the Arab world by transforming the anger and need for expression found throughout the region into a globally circulated and recognized form of visual protest. While the street art created during the Arab Spring uprisings in countries such as Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria is little known and discussed, that of Egypt, particularly Cairo, has come to serve a symbolic function in representing the uprising against repression of political expression throughout the Middle East. The events of January 25 (the date of the first protest in Tahrir Square) to February 11 (the date of Mubarak’s resignation)

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have been well documented elsewhere. What has been less discussed are the ways in which graffiti and street art gained both political currency and visual sophistication throughout the eighteen days of the revolution. If we start from Ganzeer’s billboard “bomb” (“Down with Mubarak”) and follow the development through more extensive texts on to signs, posters and, eventually, large-scale murals (though many of these were done in the weeks immediately following February 11), we can find emerging styles and aesthetics, including the martyrs’ memorials initiated by Ganzeer in March 2011. Beginning as early as January 28, the base of the Talaat Harb statue in Talaat Harb Square served as a tablet for inscriptions documenting the events that took place specifically in that square and more broadly during the early days of the revolution. The sentiments posed in some of these statements reflected an early optimism about the effectiveness of the revolution that was to be misplaced until some weeks later. The “Statement No. 1 of the Freedom Revolution” suggested the Mubarak regime’s imminent collapse: “This square . . . was soaked with the blood of the freedom martyrs. And so the tyrant and his aides have fallen at the hands of the youth of the free Egypt on the Friday of Anger.”13 Visually, the inscriptions bear an affinity to the Monument Against Fascism, erected in Hamburg, Germany, in 1986 by artists Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz. This monument consisted of a twelvemeter-high square column, coated with lead, which sank gradually into the platform on which it was erected. Visitors to the monument were encouraged to inscribe their names on the monument as a commitment to remain attentive to the possible rise of fascism and to its immediate suppression. As the bottom of the column filled with names, the column descended to reveal a blank space for additional signatures. The column eventually disappeared in 1993 and remains buried, acknowledged by a plaque explaining the action. The base of the Talaat Harb monument, with its calls for revolution and the dismantling of a tyrannical, undemocratic regime, can also be read as a counter-monument, in which the memorial form (in this case, the form of an existing monument) is co-opted for new purposes that call into question our expectations of a monument and its function. The inscriptions on the Talaat Harb monument were, of course, like virtually all of the revolutionary graffiti and street art in Cairo, eventually removed and the monument returned to its original state. In this regard, the Talaat Harb monument occupies a similar space to the Gerzes’ Monument Against Fascism in that the text of the monument disappeared, leaving only a memory and photographic documentation of its existence. The absence of physical traces of the revolutionary street art in Cairo and in other sites of Arab Spring uprisings is both poignant and problematic as the passage

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of time threatens to erase not only the actual images but also their messages. The physical transformation of highly politicized spaces of revolution, such as Tahrir Square, the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain, or Azadi Square in Tehran, which following their use as sites of protest, were returned to, or reshaped as, peaceful public areas, calls into question the continued existence of place memories that can be important for continuing revolutionary momentum. In Europe, some Holocaust museums and memorials have at times been criticized for their abstract, minimalist design, which can be read as whitewashing painful historical memories. Daniel Liebeskind’s massive Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe has been poorly received in some quarters for its reliance on rectilinear forms, unaltered by text or any explanatory symbols. Similar criticisms were lodged against Maya Lin’s minimalist, black granite Vietnam Veterans Memorial when it was built at the Mall in Washington, DC, in 1982. While countermonuments can be powerful in their silence, or even absence, arguably they are not effective as catalysts of lasting change. The current rise of neofascist and farright parties in Europe may suggest that the ubiquitous presence of monuments and memorials to those killed by previous fascist or totalitarian regimes has not been sufficient to stem the tide of hatred and anger that still drives racist and nationalist agendas in many areas. It has taken decades for Europe to engage systematically in both critical discourse and aesthetic exploration of the darkest episodes in its twentieth-century history; if, in the face of such self-reflection, it is still possible for highly inflammatory and xenophobic groups to gain traction, how much more difficult must it be for revolutionary ideals to continue to flourish in countries such as Egypt?

Martyrs as subjects for street art A defining feature of the visual landscape of Cairo during and after the January 25 revolution was the multitude of portraits of martyrs of the revolution. Whether stenciled, wheatpasted, crudely painted, or crafted with stunning detail and skill, these portraits personified and personalized the revolution. They acted as a visual antidote to the images of Mubarak, Morsi, and other government figures. As Basma Hamdy writes, “Nothing captured the identity of the Egyptian revolution more than the martyr portraits that filled the streets of Cairo. . . . It was therefore critical that the murals were created in a public space and not confined to a gallery or museum, since the city walls became a stage on which the transformation of life and death took place.”14

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In December 2011, Sheikh Emad Effat, dubbed the “Sheikh of the Revolution,” was killed by military police. Shortly after his murder, street artist Ammar Abo Bakr painted his portrait in Mohamed Mahmoud Street. In many respects, this work corresponds visually to the dozens of portraits of martyrs that were, by this time, scattered throughout the streets of Cairo and had even been highlighted in quasi-legitimized exhibitions such as that staged by the RAU in the subway. Elements of Abo Bakr’s portrait, however, link the image to other Islamic visual traditions, notably the use of nonfigurative, decorative motifs. The portrait is accompanied by a verse from the Qur’an which, while not uncommon in images of martyrs, provides an overtly religious context to the work.15 The decorative motifs—some vegetative, some displaying traditional Arabic patterns such as

Figure 2 Ammar Abo Bakr, Sheikh Emad Effat. Photo credit: Megapress/Alamy Stock Photo.

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the arabesque—surrounding the verse echo those included in many illuminated Qur’ans from the Middle Ages and beyond. Thus, not only the text but also the imagery links the Sheikh to a tradition of martyrdom extending back to the earliest phases of Islam. The specific verse quoted references the duplicity of the peoples’ leaders and calls on God to issue a strong punishment for their failure to provide proper guidance. That the portrait was painted almost a year after the protests in Tahrir Square, after the disappointment experienced by the people with the government of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), proved little, if any, better than that of Mubarak may be read into that selection. Abo Bakr depicts Sheikh Emad Effat dressed in the robes of a cleric, his eyes slightly uplifted, looking past the viewer and following the line of his arm, which is extended into the foreground. The Sheikh’s gaze does not meet that of his audience; rather, he appears to see beyond the space we occupy and into another realm. On his back are brightly colored angel’s wings, contrasting sharply with the brown of his robe and drawing the viewer’s attention. Angels play a prominent role in Islamic religious tradition, beginning with the angel Jibra’il’s revelation of the Quran to Mohammed. The pictorial tradition of representing angels begins in the twelfth century, following which period their representation becomes well-established in Islamic visual art, notably in painting.16 Thus, the incorporation of angel’s wings into Abo Bakr’s portrait of the Sheikh, like the use of decorative motifs, references a long visual tradition and situates the Sheikh firmly within this legacy. That he appears already to be beyond this world, coupled with the use of religiously affiliated symbols and the Qur’anic verse, suggests that the artist wished to depict the Sheikh less in the traditional mode of contemporary martyr portraits and more as a visionary leader, whose closeness to God ushered him immediately beyond the earthly world and into the realm of Paradise. Images of martyrs became ubiquitous in Cairo in the months after the Tahrir Square protests, particularly following the Port Said massacre of February 1, 2012, in which seventy-four supporters of the Al-Ahly (Cairo) football team were killed. It was widely believed that the SCAF were responsible for the attacks on the Al-Ahly fans, which were carried out inside the Port Said football stadium following a premier league match. The Al-Ahly Ultras have a known history of fighting against the police and supporting street protests, and the attack in Port Said may have been in retaliation for their role in the 2011 revolution. Ammar Abo Bakr again took the lead in portraying many of the martyred dead around Cairo, including on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. The act of painting the Port

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Said martyrs became part of a much larger and organized campaign of painting murals on the walls of the American University in Cairo campus. The goal of the artists participating in the work was to create enough of a presence to deter members of the Muslim Brotherhood from blocking Mohamed Mahmoud Street and denying entry to protestors arriving from Tahrir Square. Thus, the murals took on a politically charged significance as their production served as the vehicle for a planned and coordinated confrontation between protestors and the Muslim Brothers while also functioning as an impetus for gatherings of citizens who came to discuss, and argue, over the issues raised by the murals. Working on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, Abo Bakr was joined by Alaa Awad and Hanaa El Degham, whose contributions to the murals, along with Abo Bakr’s martyr portraits, combine to make one of the most visually striking and powerfully effective works of street art to emerge from the Egyptian revolution. These three artists were joined by others who contributed to the painting, helped keep the Muslim Brothers away from the works, provided food for the artists, and participated in many discussions about the future of the revolution and the role played by spaces such as Mohamed Mahmoud Street in it. One participant in these discussions was the journalist Ahmed Aboul Hassan who explains how

Figure 3 Various artists, Martyrs of Port Said (mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street). Photo credit: Alain Guilleux/Alamy Stock Photo.

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the conversations, as well as the interactions with those viewing the production of the murals, shaped the development of the works themselves: In the second week [of painting] we all began to become gradually aware of the revolutionary spirit that had been gradually accumulating within the Egyptian identity over the past 60 centuries. . . . Therefore it was necessary for us to incorporate the history of how Egyptians deal with martyrs before we could complete the mural. As we contemplated our work during our nighttime discussions, we decided that we would transform the walls of Mohamed Mahmoud into a cemetery immortalizing the memory of the massacres at the hands of the anti-revolutionaries.17

This decision to both provide historical context for the martyrs’ portraits and to explicitly frame the space of Mohamed Mahmoud Street as a cemetery led to the design of two murals by Alaa Awad, representing episodes from ancient Egyptian history that reference revolution and martyrdom. The contemporary and the past merge amid a profusion of symbols, portraits, and slogans that capture the revolutionary spirit of the moment. The visual and psychological power of the Port Said massacre mural, its companions on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, and its role as a physical site of mourning and memory made it all the more astonishing when Abo Bakr himself chose to paint over the Port Said mural in May 2012 during the presidential elections. While the portraits of the martyrs remained semi-visible in some cases, Abo Bakr overlaid them with images of the martyrs’ mothers and with a text written in large, black Arabic script. The text read “Forget the past and stay with the elections,” an ironic comment by the artist who felt that people had become so preoccupied with the elections that they had lost sight of goals of the revolution and become desensitized to the images of the martyrs. As Basma Hamdy comments, “Painting the mothers was the artist’s attempt to reawaken the public’s powerful reaction to the mural. This time, the suffering was depicted: the martyr was transformed from icon back to human and hence the mothers’ contorted and agonizing faces were realistically portrayed. The viewers are forced to feel shame and to question their role in this reality.”18 One of the mothers holds a sign reading “The young revolutionaries will avenge my son,” perhaps intended as a reminder to viewers of the mural that they should forget neither their revolutionary goals nor those who died for the cause and, indeed, that they bear responsibility for continuing the work of the revolution. Other artists created similar representations, forming what might be considered a subgenre of the martyr portraits: representations of grieving women,

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presumably mothers, which served, along with the martyr portraits themselves, to commemorate the dead. Sometimes a woman was represented holding a picture or inscription indicating her grief for a specific person, but sometimes these women were portrayed as generic figures, standing in for all those who lost loved ones during the protests and police crackdowns. The women are almost exclusively portrayed wearing full hijab in a distinctly traditional style associated with mothers and grandmothers, thus clearly denoting their familial role. Often they look straight at the viewer, unflinching, in a pose resembling that of many of the martyr portraits. Their grim determination suggests a commitment to the cause that is as strong and unwavering as that expressed by their sons or grandsons. Although less common than the stoic representations discussed above, there were also some paintings of women in the throes of grief. One of the more striking of these was a mural by Mohamed Elmoshir placed on Sabry Abou Alam Street that depicted the funeral of sixteen-year-old Gaber “Jika” Salah, an activist killed in November 2012.19 Salah’s mother walks in front of her son’s coffin, which is carried by several men, the wrapped body clearly visible inside. She is wailing, her face contorted in grief, and she carries in front of her a portrait of her dead son. The pallbearers show on their faces a mix of resignation and anger, and the entire composition presents an image familiar from hundreds of media images of funerals in the Middle East, not just in Egypt but in Israel, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond. As such, the mural may be seen as a portrayal of a very specific moment of the loss of one individual and the grief and anger of his family and friends but also as a universal representation of these same emotions on the part of entire populations throughout the region. These women occupy a very different visual and psychological space than that of Nefertiti with a gas mask, for example. Rather than serving as emblems of the women who protested in Tahrir Square, contributing in equal capacity to the revolution, these mothers are linked to a traditional gender role. As mothers, their primary focus in life is on their husband and children, and it is incumbent upon them to raise their sons as good, devout Muslims who will accept martyrdom when called upon for a just cause. The notion of martyrdom is not, of course, unique to Islam and has a much longer tradition particularly in Christian ideology. Indeed, the iconic image of the grieving mother is, in many parts of the world, that of Mary, mother of Jesus, weeping over her dead son in endless paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from the medieval period through today. Visually, there are interesting parallels between the veiled mothers of the Muslim martyrs and the veiled Mary of so many Renaissance works of art. However, that visual connection is a fragile one. On closer consideration, there is a resolve and

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strength on the faces of the mothers of the Egyptian martyrs that is rarely, if ever, seen on Christian depictions of Mary. The Christian mother of God accepts both her son’s fate and her own willingly and humbly as part of God’s unknowable but perfect plan; the mothers of the martyrs are no less devout believers in God’s omnipotence, but their faces betray an anger and justified outrage that speaks to the revolutionary conditions in which their portraits were created. They are accepting of their sons’ fate, but they are not accepting of the conditions that prompted the martyrdom.

Satirical gestures In 2012, on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, Omar Picasso painted a caricatured portrait in which the face of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak merged into that of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. As former chairman of the SCAF, Tantawi acted as Egypt’s de facto head of state from the time of Mubarak’s ouster until the inauguration of Mohamed Morsi as president in June 2012. For the painting’s caption, Picasso rephrases an Egyptian proverb: “He who has children, does not die” is changed to “He who delegates, does not die,” a reference to the continuation of the Mubarak regime’s oppressive

Figure 4 Omar Picasso, Tantawi is Mubarak. Photo credit: Gigi Ibrahim from Cairo, Egypt (Two face of the same coin—‫ﻛﻠﻒ اﻟﻠﻲ‬ ‫( )ﻣﺎﻣﺎﺗﺶ‬CC BY 2.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0]), via Wikimedia Commons.

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policies under the leadership of the SCAF. Like Abo Bakr’s portrait of Sheikh Emad Effat, Picasso’s double portrait is created not during the hopeful frenzy of the Tahrir Square protests, but in the more muted and cynical atmosphere of the following year. Also, like Abo Bakr, Picasso chooses to use text that refers to the disappointment felt by the Egyptian people when it became clear that the toppling of Mubarak would not quickly or easily lead to the reforms they demanded. Visually, however, the style of the two portraits could hardly be more different. Where Abo Bakr relied on a simple, colorful composition that foregrounded the portrait of the Sheikh against the accompanying text and embellishments, Picasso’s portrait is more complex in its painterly technique and draws on a tradition of political cartooning that is associated primarily with Western political and editorial cartoonists, such as Pat Oliphant and Gerald Scarfe. Given the historical censorship of the press in most Middle Eastern countries, political cartoons do not have a long or visible history.20 Where Abo Bakr draws on Arabic visual traditions in his portrait, Picasso does precisely the opposite.21 The carefully rendered and shaded lines in the faces of both Mubarak and Tantawi allow the merger between the two to be seamless enough to initially escape the viewer’s attention, yet significant enough to be revealed on a second look. This subtle handling of forms, particularly in representation of faces, can be traced back in a European tradition to nineteenth-century caricaturists such as Honoré Daumier. In 1834, Daumier produced a popular lithograph showing the head of the unpopular French king Louis-Philippe I morphed into the form of a pear. In this example, Daumier presented the king with three faces and titled the work “The past, the present, the future”—a sentiment perhaps not out of place with the mood in Egypt in early 2012.22 Daumier was not alone in using the form of the pear to satirize, or caricature, Louis-Phillipe. The visual pun gained its weight through the fact that the French word for pear, “la poire,” was also in use as a slang term in referring to someone as a “blockhead.” Thus, the fact that Louis-Phillipe’s cranium could be aligned with the fruit provided a notso-subtle comment on the popular opinion of the king. The Mubarak/Tantawi portrait emerges organically from the associated text, appearing to grow from the words like a branch or, perhaps more aptly, like a head emerging from a serpent’s body. The motif of a snake with the head(s) of hated government officials appeared elsewhere on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Ammar Abo Bakr’s mural, also painted in the spring of 2012, depicting a long snake’s body terminating in the heads of three SCAF generals. The snake is supported by pairs of military boots, suggesting that the head is only able to survive due to the cooperation of anonymous troops. Beneath this long

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serpent is another snake, this one with the head of Suzanne Mubarak. Although the male heads of state were the primary targets of popular outrage during the Arab Spring, members of their families, particularly their wives, were also vilified. Suzanne Mubarak, along with Leila Trebelsi, wife of Tunisian ex-president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, were reviled for their lavish spending and accused of corruption. Wives of other Middle Eastern leaders have more recently come under intense scrutiny and criticism for transgressions which, while their own, are linked to perceptions of wrongdoing by their husbands. Thus, Sara Netanyahu, wife of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has found herself under investigation and is facing indictment for fraud and misuse of public funds. Asma al-Assad, wife of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, has earned the nickname “first lady of hell” for her seeming indifference to the plight of Syrian citizens during the country’s devastating civil war, and Syrians and international observers alike have been appalled by her continued focus on shopping even during the most brutal moments of the conflict. Before any of these women emerged on the world stage, there was Imelda Marcos, wife of the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose collection of 1,000 pairs of shoes became the emblem of her husband’s corrupt government. Suzanne Mubarak occupied a similar position as the face of the hypocrisy and corruption of which her husband was accused by so many Egyptians, many of whom were living in poverty while the Mubaraks enjoyed their lavish and opulent lifestyle. Abo Bakr’s representation of her head on a snake would be justified on that basis alone. However, the image may have other resonances as well. The story of Adam and Eve and their temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden is known in Islamic as well as Christian tradition. Islamic artists, particularly manuscript illuminators, have portrayed the story on many occasions.23 For artists working in the Christian tradition, the various phases of the Adam and Eve narrative formed an important part of religious iconography from the earliest examples of Christian art. As the Adam and Eve iconography developed in the Christian visual tradition, artists began to make a visual association between Eve and the evil serpent by placing a woman’s head on the serpent’s body, thus visually reinforcing the link between the serpent’s temptation of Eve and her subsequent temptation of Adam, leading to the expulsion from Eden.24 This iconographic element does not appear to feature in Islamic representations of Eve; however, for a viewer schooled in the canonical tradition of Western art history, the visual parallel between Renaissance representations of the female-headed serpent, such as those by Masolino and Michelangelo, and the representation of Suzanne Mubarak on the head of a serpent in Mohamed

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Mahmoud Street is strong. I am not suggesting that Abo Bakr had such a visual connection in mind when creating his image and think it is unlikely that this would have been the case. However, the example does serve as a reminder that when viewers from different cultures, with different artistic traditions, view the street art of the Middle East, the images are complicated by translation not just of the Arabic language, but of visual motifs as well.

Historical references Yasmin El Shazly posits that ancient satirical papyri as well as pottery fragments (ostraca) may be seen as evidence of a subversive element in Egyptian popular culture that extends back centuries but that also has parallels in the street art of the revolution: One can argue that the [satirical] images . . . may have been drawn on ostraca by Egyptian citizens with dubious intentions, as a way of mocking their superiors, and criticizing the society in which they lived as a whole. This is exactly what the Egyptian graffiti artist Alaa Awad did over 3,000 years later on Mohamed Mahmoud Street when he copied the image [of a cat fanning a mouse] from an ancient Egyptian ostracon.25

This connection suggests that revolutionary street art may have drawn on ancient imagery and stylistic devices as an explicit acknowledgment of a rebellious or subversive element within Egyptian culture. It is also possible that the references to Pharaonic art emerge due to the fact that Egyptians have a more unbroken connection to their past and a more visible and valued cultural heritage than “younger” countries such as those in the Gulf. It is also interesting to note that much of the revolutionary street art was produced in the neighborhood of the Egyptian Museum that was concurrently being ransacked, with the country’s cultural treasures being looted and destroyed. Visually, the historically oriented works make a striking contrast to the more contemporary images that formed the majority of revolutionary street art and can be analyzed in terms of their aesthetic and formal characteristics. Some of the most recognizable of the historically influenced murals are those painted by Alaa Awad on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. In addition to the image of the cat fanning the mouse referenced above, Awad painted the Mural of the Wailing Women, the Mural of the Free Women, The Mural of Conflict in this location—these are the murals that flanked Abo Bakr’s portraits of the Port

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Said martyrs. A closer look at one of these, the Mural of the Wailing Women, reveals some of the elements that make the reuse of ancient Egyptian imagery both visually and conceptually appealing. The image is based on a mural in the tomb of Ramose, a vizier under the pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten (third century BC). As a high ranking official, Ramose was buried in the Theban Necropolis and his tomb is notable for the high quality of its decorations, of which the mural which served as inspiration for Awad is a particularly strong example. Awad’s mural excerpts a small section of the original work, in which a group of grieving women are inserted into the image of the funeral procession for Ramose. Although the ancient mural shows two groups of women interspersed throughout the procession, Awad focuses only on one of the two. His depiction is quite true to the original, even mimicking the strategy of placing groups of women in layers in the two-dimensional space, offering a primitive suggestion of depth. Where Awad departs from the original is, rather, in the absence of the male members of the procession who, in the tomb of Ramose, bear gifts and luxury items that the vizier will need in the afterlife. The men entering Awad’s composition from the left instead carry on their heads what appears to be a coffin, thus creating a visual link to some of the martyr murals, such as that of the funeral of Gaber Salah discussed previously. In this way, Awad appropriates a highly recognizable historical image (the wailing women is a popular motif for tourist prints and other items sold in Thebes) and adapts it to a modern context in such a way that a visual resonance between past and presence is subtly created. The style of figural representation in many of the works of revolutionary street art bears a resemblance to not only the ancient Egyptian paintings and sculptures but also the forms of Egyptian modernism, as practiced by artists such as Samir Rafi, Inji Efflatoun, and Hamed Ewais.26 These artists drew on traditions of European modernism, including expressionism, cubism, and social realism to create works that expressed the character of the Egyptian people and recorded the urban and rural landscapes of the country. Many of these modernist paintings also addressed political issues, often obliquely, for fear of negative repercussions.

Post-revolutionary commercialism The commercial aspect of the growth and acceptance of street art in Egypt is not yet entirely clear. Some writers on the topic, such as Soraya Morayef, see a burgeoning interest in this art following the revolution: “Cairo’s street artists today are being sought after by art galleries, cultural institutes, international

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art exhibitions, advertising companies and many more. Some have gone on to create art for magazine covers, others have exhibited in Europe, and others have seen their stencils recreated on t-shirts that are worn by the young revolutionary segment of Egyptian society.”27 Indeed, Ganzeer, the artist who in 2011 sprayed “Down with Mubarak” across the dictator’s Tahrir Square portrait, had a solo exhibition at New York’s Leila Heller Gallery in early 2015. The urban art gallery Station 16 in Montreal has featured a number of Egyptian street artists and recently released a limited edition print by the artist Bahia Shehab. The print, titled No to Stripping the People, features the iconic, stenciled image of the blue bra. It is worth noting, however, that works by these artists are not commanding high prices: Shehab’s print, for example, retails for approximately 120 dollars. Critic Giacomo Crescenzi sees a more complicated context surrounding Egyptian street art, one in which the attention paid to the genre may be obscuring other contemporary art activity in Egypt and giving a false sense that the art market even in these spheres is healthy and growing. Additionally, Crescenzi questions whether the perceived exposure given to Egyptian street art is really as substantial as suggested. Writing on the website egyptianstreets.com, Crescenzi draws attention to the problems faced by contemporary artists in Egypt: Despite the fact that street art is only one small component of the art scene in Egypt, this newly found media interest may have had a positive impact if the public interest was translated into concrete opportunities for street artists as representative of a new era for art in Egypt, but very little has been done to this date. . . . If so much media attention is reserved to Egyptian street artists why is no one compelled enough to bring their work where art is being made today? And what about the majority of Egyptian artists who have nothing to do with street art? Why haven’t they been empowered as representatives of a culture that needs to soften its politicization?28

Crescenzi goes on to address the absence of Egyptian artists in 2013 at two significant events in the region: Art Dubai and the Sharjah Biennial (at least one artist represented Egypt in the 2015 edition of the Biennial). Crescenzi raises legitimate and important questions about the true impact of the attention received by the street art of the revolution, questions which suggest that the potentially positive aspects of the recognition of the commercial and aesthetic value of Egyptian street art and Egyptian contemporary art more generally have not been fully realized. Another change in street art in Cairo since the years immediately following the revolution is the increasing presence of commissioned, nonpolitical work,

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a trend that may be seen as related to the increasing commercialization of street art in the city. One project in particular, Women on Walls, has drawn both praise and criticism for its recent work. Founded by Mia Gröndhal, author of Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt, Women on Walls is an initiative that seeks to empower women street artists, particularly in countries such as Egypt where the street art scene is overwhelmingly dominated by men and where women artists often feel unsafe creating work.29 Many of the Women on Walls projects have been well-received and the group has branches around Egypt and in Jordan. However, in 2015, Women on Walls sparked controversy with a project to paint several murals on the walls of the Greek Campus, a technology oriented entrepreneurial space in downtown Cairo. The building fronts in part on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, a location that functions as a memorial space honoring the martyrs of the revolution for many involved with the 2011 protests. The decision to paint new works, as part of a funded project, in this almost sacred location, received substantial criticism.30 One message sprayed on the wall during the project’s opening day read “This street is a necropolis. Only here no commercial graffiti is allowed.”31 Gröndhal herself defended the project and location, saying, while she respected the feelings of those who see Mohamed Mahmoud Street as a special area, “We have been very clear about this .  .  . street art is not a thing that is forever. I think it would be the right thing to do to just make new graffiti. We are not creating a museum in the street.”32 While this incident is not directly linked to the sale of street art or its display in a museum or gallery setting, clearly the issue of external funding for the production of the work was a critical element in the controversy over its appropriateness and thus reflects the uneasy balance between street art as an illicit and, yet, a publicly celebrated medium. The ongoing production of street art in Egypt—whether underground or officially sanctioned, whether for commercial sale to private collectors or for public display in the city streets, whether it lasts for years or makes only an ephemeral mark—will be worthy of further study and consideration. Issues such as the often-fleeting nature of revolutionary street art, the conflation of art and memorial space, the commercialization of motifs from revolutionary art, and the emergence of those artists onto the international contemporary art scene are ones that find parallels in other countries throughout the Middle East and around the world. The Barjeel Art Foundation, founded by the Emirati Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, is widely viewed as holding one of the most important collections of modernist and contemporary art from the Middle East and extremely active in presenting that artwork locally and abroad.33 Its founder was an active voice on social media, particularly Twitter, during and after the Arab

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Spring and noted for his outspoken commentary which, at times, questioned the policies of his home country. As a member of the ruling family of Sharjah, Al-Qassemi may have enjoyed a level of protection from retribution for his potentially inflammatory remarks, although he has certainly been subject to criticism from UAE citizens and other residents of the Gulf. Yet, following the events of June 2017, which saw the UAE and three other Middle East countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Egypt) cut ties with Qatar, accusing the country of supporting terrorism, Al-Qassemi disappeared from social media. His radio silence was interpreted as a reaction to the tensions in the Gulf, an assumption that has been neither publicly confirmed nor denied by Al-Qassemi himself.34 That the Barjeel Art Foundation collects works by street artists should perhaps come as no surprise, given Al-Qassemi’s prominence as a commentator on the events of the Arab Spring. However, the choice of works may be unexpected and confirms the desire of the foundation’s founder to shake up the complacency of the Arab world—in this case through art, rather than vocal political activism. To take one example, the foundation owns a work titled Life (2014) by Ganzeer.35 The relatively large work (237  × 108 cm) was created using spray paint, house paint, and markers on wood and thus retains some of the raw quality of Ganzeer’s works on the streets of Cairo. The subject of the painting, however, could never have appeared on those streets, for it shows the bottom half of the nude photo posted by Alia El-Mahdy that caused such turmoil on social media and occasioned Abo Bakr’s stenciled commentary on the divergent reactions to El-Mahdy’s experience versus that of Samira Ibrahim. Ganzeer’s painting, however, is even more explicit than El-Mahdy’s original photograph, for it shows a pink rope emerging from El-Mahdy’s vagina and twisting and twining across the canvas. The visual reference to Carolee Schneeman’s iconic 1975 performance work, Interior Scroll, is inescapable. The context, however, is extremely different. Schneeman’s work was initially performed in front of a largely female audience and was created by a woman artist to question and confront the unease with which culture, particularly male culture, viewed women’s vaginas or, to use Schneeman’s words, their “vulvic space.”36 As such, the work is fully owned and controlled by a woman; men participate in the piece solely as viewers. Ganzeer’s work, on the other hand, appropriates a photograph initially taken and posted by a woman, arguably in a bid to claim agency over her own body, but then layers his own message onto that image in his painting. The rope emerging from the woman’s body, which has a visual similarity to an umbilical cord, combined with the title Life, focuses attention on the female body in a reproductive capacity; although the image is in many ways quite explicitly sexual, the textual layering

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and visual choices made by the male artist reframe it in ways that were likely unintended by its original author. That the painting was subsequently purchased by the male founder of an innovative art foundation that remains housed in one of the most conservative emirates in the UAE complicates matters even further. It is in some ways surprising that the work can be viewed on the Barjeel Art Foundation website, placing it back into the online context that formed the locus for dissemination and discussion of the original photograph. In Life we have an image that moved from the virtual space of the web, to the physical space of the street, to the private space of a painting for a collection, and back to the online environment. As such, it demonstrates the complex trail of presence, proliferation, and association that can trail street art for years after its initial production. These issues are particularly germane to the highly publicized revolutionary street art of the Egyptian revolution but can be brought to bear on the street art of other countries in the Middle East as well.

2

Lebanon: Walls of Conflict in a Divided City

While war-torn nations such as Syria and Yemen rightly occupy current headlines as emblems of an intractable conflict in the Middle East, during the 1970s and 1980s it was Lebanon that ranked as a prime hotspot and battleground between religious factions in the region. Lebanon’s political structure has been a complex and, at times, uneasy mingling of eighteen religious groups since the country gained independence in 1943. The top three positions in the government are by constitutional mandate allocated along sectarian lines: the president must be a Maronite Christian, the speaker of the parliament a Shia Muslim, and the prime minister a Sunni Muslim. This leaves sects such as Druze, Greek Orthodox, Melkite Christian, and smaller populations of Christian and other faiths somewhat outside the political mainstream, and these populations have felt increasingly marginalized throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This complexity and contradiction, as much as any other historical, geographical, or cultural markers, characterizes past and present Lebanon. In the book Le Liban: Géographie d’un pays paradoxal, the authors quote an unnamed journalist whose ironic comment “Le Liban est un pays impossible. S’il était possible, ce ne serait pas le Liban . . . [Lebanon is an impossible country. If it were possible, it would not be Lebanon . . .]”1 summarizes the way in which the country is bound to its own conflict as a hallmark of identity. Despite the perennial unrest between sectarian factions, between 1943 and 1975, Lebanon, particularly its capital city of Beirut, enjoyed a level of openness and cosmopolitanism rare in the Middle East of the time. Billed as “the Paris of the Middle East,” Beirut attracted artists and writers such as Khalil Saleeby, Saliba Douaihy, Amin Rihani, and May Ziade, and developed a thriving local cultural milieu. The American University of Beirut, which had been established in 1866 as the Syrian Protestant College (its name was changed in 1920), grew in both size and reputation, coming to rank as one of the top institutions of higher education in the region and contributing to the vibrant intellectual life of the city

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and nation. With such a backdrop of stability, worldliness, and prosperity, the descent of Lebanon into the chaos of the last four decades seems to strain belief. Between 1975 and 1990, Lebanon was shattered by a civil war that nominally pitted Christians against Muslims, but in reality involved deeper and more complex divisions between the various sects and political factions within the country and also engaged foreign powers as proxies in the conflict. While a full account of this horrific period in Lebanon’s history is clearly beyond the scope of this volume, it is nonetheless critical to offer a summary of the motivations behind the warring factions and the key events of the conflict as they so indelibly shaped the political and urban landscape of Beirut and, thereby, form the metaphorical and literal backdrop for the street art under discussion. The urban landscape still bears the physical marks of the civil war, visible scars that shock the visitor with their sheer volume and prominence throughout the city. Buildings remain rife with bullet and mortar holes. Stunning examples of art deco and mid-century modern architecture stand empty or partially occupied as shadows of their once glorious past. And yet, amid the ruin, new constructions and renovations emerge. The city is clearly attempting to reclaim its image as a shopping and entertainment destination, and the luxury shopping complex Beirut Souks, which was built by the famous Spanish architect Rafael Moneo and opened in 2009, is a prime example of this urban renewal. However, its glitz and glamor cannot fully disguise a fundamental unease within the city. Writing in the Guardian, architecture critic Oliver Wright notes, “The city centre now boasts immaculately rebuilt streets, lined with the stores of Gucci and Prada, Hermès and Louis Vuitton, but the whole place is strangely deserted. There are thickets of new apartment buildings, but few lights are switched on behind the curtains.”2 Located in downtown Beirut, the mall is one of the many properties owned and developed by the Solidere group, the public/private company that has been tasked by Lebanon’s government with the task of rebuilding the city center of Beirut, a 472-acre area that encompasses historical settlements dating back 5,000 years in addition to serving as the thriving cultural, political, and financial center of twentieth-century Beirut.3 The Solidere (an acronym of the Société Libanaise pour le Developpement et la Reconstruction de Beyrouth) redevelopment project is a source of enormous controversy in the city and beyond, with many residents arguing that the urban character of old Beirut is being irreparably damaged, if not completely destroyed, by the contemporary architecture and streetscapes imposed by the Solidere plans. The owner of the once-glamorous St. George Hotel, a former harbor-side playground for the rich and famous, now a deserted shell, likens the actions of Solidere to a second

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destruction of the city: “They have illegally seized the city from the people who own it, and put back an empty maquette of Beirut without any of the people. What they have done to the city is apocalyptic.”4 His hotel has become a symbol of the division and battles between the former owners and occupants of city center properties, whose own vision for reconstruction is sorely at odds with the government-backed Solidere. Additionally, the intensive focus of public and private resources on this relatively small, albeit historically critical, section of the city has stirred resentment on the part of those citizens living in neighborhoods where not only does the physical architecture remain in tatters but also the civic infrastructure (electricity, garbage collection, etc.) is subject to frequent failures. Beirut is a city where monuments cannot thrive. It is experienced in the form of a blurred knowledge. One that keeps escaping the memory, that lacks the tangible, the concrete. .  .  . What it leaves you with is a thought; an idea of a city, its vibrancy, its intricacies . . . and a fiction of it you once created in your imagination before you even encountered it.5

Lebanese artist Ziad Abillama captures in this statement another inherent contradiction in Beirut’s physical and mental landscape. While memory and memories are paramount in constructing both historical and present narratives of the city, the spaces of memory are complicated and this complexity is often reflected in visual form. Walter Benjamin’s concept of the work of memory is akin to archaeology, in which the person remembering must both dig through the past and attend to the process of digging; it is not sufficient to merely unearth artifacts. As Benjamin writes in “Excavation and Memory,” The man who merely makes an inventory of his findings, while failing to establish the exact location of where in today’s ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of his richest prize. In this sense, for authentic memories, it is far less important that the investigator report on them than that he mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained possession of them. Epic and rhapsodic in the strictest sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good archaeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through.6

In the context of Lebanon, the resistance to the redevelopment projects by Solidere and other groups can be seen as disregarding the necessary attention to the space of excavation and to the identity of those remembering. In the

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neighborhood surrounding Beirut Souks, as in other parts of Beirut, there are ongoing archaeological excavations uncovering the Roman and Phoenician remains of Beirut’s ancient past. As important as these excavations are, in delving directly past layers of the city that hold recent memories of conflict, they will, in Benjamin’s words, “yield those images that, severed from all earlier associations, reside as treasures in the sober rooms of our later insights—like torsos in a collector’s gallery.”7 Should the proposed archaeological museum for the city come to fruition, the collector’s gallery envisioned by Benjamin will exist to hold these contextually displaced artifacts, safely disconnected from the city’s recent history. Yet, even the excavations themselves are vulnerable to the relentless pace of progress and redevelopment in Beirut, as anxious developers occasionally close down sites that are impeding construction.8 It seems that all memory, physical and psychological, ancient and modern, is under threat in Beirut, a situation which street artists sometimes respond to in their work and sometimes contribute to.

The growth of street art in Beirut It is difficult to ascribe an exact point of origin for the emergence of a street art scene in Beirut. Clearly, graffiti was an important means of political expression during the 1975–90 civil war, but it did not show evidence of the visual style of street art.9 According to Berlin-based, but Beirut-native, street artist SISKA, the emergence of a true street art scene in Beirut can be traced to the early 1990s following which it developed along with the city’s hip-hop scene.10 As Lebanese hip-hop artists sought to create their own identity through the adoption of a Lebanese vernacular in their lyrics, so too did Lebanese street artists seek to create a local style that was not dependent on trends from New York or European cities. Yet the use of Arabic script remained, for many years, the main distinguishing feature between Beirut street art and that of America and Europe. SISKA, along with other street artists and writers, views the years 2005 through 2007 as having a significant impact on the street art scene in Beirut in terms of catalyzing artists to use their work for more explicitly political messages and in raising the profile of Beirut street art locally and internationally. He cites the summer of 2006, during the Israeli war against Lebanon, as a key moment in the development of street art (or, in his words, graffiti) in Beirut when he and other writers/artists began painting messages in Arabic during the Israeli night bombings that rocked the center of the city. The first of a series of simple text pieces centered around the name of the city had the words “Beirut never

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dies” painted in the Monot area of the city, near the infamous Green Line that divided Christian and Muslim communities during the civil war. Of this and related pieces, SISKA has written: “I really tried to relate to Beirut with the style of writing and not only copy a European or American style. I wanted to find the font of our city and carefully place the messages in the right spots around the city, which has suffered such a long history of being marked by different groups and interests.”11 It is clear that the use of an Arabic calligraphy style is intended to shift this work from the Western context of the Roman alphabet. However, the actual visual style of the work—with puffy white letters, outlined in a heavy black, with spray paint traces clearly visible—echoes the New York subway graffiti of the 1970s and 1980s. SISKA does not explain exactly what style of American and European writing he and other Beirut artists were attempting to move away from; if it was the stenciled work popularized by artists such as Banksy and Shepard Fairey in the early 2000s, then clearly they have succeeded. Perhaps the visual reference to early New York graffiti was neither intended nor noticed; after all, these artists were not even born during those years and, without exposure to American popular culture from the same time period, may be only obliquely aware, if at all, of the style of those works. The iconic “Beirut never dies” piece was subsequently used by the independent Beirut design shop Sarah’s Bag as a design element for a series of clutch bags. The original single line of text was split in two to accommodate the shape of the bags, but otherwise the design faithfully retained the look of SISKA’s work, including the cedar tree (a reference to the Lebanese flag) and lit fuse that bracketed the text. Yet, as with so much repurposing of street art for commercial purposes, the use of a phrase written at a time of desperate struggle on the bullet-scarred walls of a city at war begs the question of appropriate context. Do the words retain their meaning when tamed and civilized in an upscale boutique? Do the hipsters carrying the bags have any knowledge of the original context and meaning of the piece? It is important to recall SISKA’s claim that he “carefully place[d] the messages in the right spots around the city”; does a handbag constitute the “right spot”? Perhaps, in the context of a rebuilding and hopeful Beirut it does. After all, this particular text (as opposed to, for example, “Beirut shame” from the same set of street art) can hold multiple meanings: a rallying cry during a time of crisis or a celebration of resilience when the crisis has passed. The use of graffiti and street art as a marketing strategy is always complicated; when the specific piece referenced was created during a war, the complications multiply. The commodification of street art and the collaboration between artists and fashion designers, food and beverage brands, or other commercial identities is one that emerges throughout

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this book. The use of SISKA’s work on designs by Sarah’s Bag offers a useful starting point for a discussion of some other important, if not always applauded, collaborations between street artists and fashion houses, particularly in the design of accessories. While Sarah’s Bag is a local, independent design and retail outlet, high-end fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs have also used street art designs and collaborated with street artists on collections. One of the earliest examples of this trend took the fashion world by storm in 2001, when designer Stephen Sprouse splashed bright, seemingly hand-painted and graffitiinspired, text reading “Louis Vuitton” on the house’s signature bags and totes. The new “logo” overlaid the classic brown and tan pattern in a way that looked like graffiti painted over an existing wall. The line was incredibly popular, enough so that the house reissued a second Stephen Sprouse collection in 2009, five years after the designer’s death. Sprouse himself was not a graffiti painter or street artist, but an established fashion designer who achieved success in the 1980s with his own styles that paid tribute to the graffiti culture of the decade. Through his collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Sprouse can be seen as bringing graffiti into the high-society world of couture fashion in a way analogous to the invasion of the contemporary art gallery by artists such as Basquiat and Haring. Louis Vuitton continued to display a fascination with graffiti and street art through the development of the “Foulards d’Artistes” collection—a line of scarves designed by street artists from around the world. Collaborators on that project included Kenny Scharf, Ben Eine, and RETNA, among others. SISKA was far from the only Beirut street artist to explore an Arabic style of graffiti during the years from 2005 to 2011. He was one of the founding members, along with Fish and Rat, of the collective REK, whose artists have spread their messages throughout the city. Building on SISKA’s early textbased works created during the Israel-Lebanon war, the group has continued to rely on short, politically charged phrases to convey their message and their visual style, using modified Arabic calligraphy rendered in large, outlined, and often shadowed letters, bears a strong connection to SISKA’s work. Likewise the popular duo ASHEKMAN (twin brothers Omar and Mohamed Kabbani) contributed numerous works in a similar style, as did other local and occasionally international artists. Although most scholars and critics writing about the street art scene in Beirut have argued that the work that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s was unconnected to the overtly political graffiti that filled the city during the civil war, this division is too simplistic. While it is true that the Lebanese government in the 1990s effectively cracked down on the writing of political graffiti, whitewashing that which remained from the years

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of the war and enacting harsh penalties for those who attempted to produce new work, the early work of artists such as SISKA, ASHEKMAN, and others is, perhaps unwittingly, heir to that earlier moment. The messages written by this younger generation of artists were necessarily less overtly political, in order to avoid the wholesale destruction of their work by the Beirut police and other government authorities. Yet, it is difficult to argue that these short phrases are not indirectly political comments. A few examples from just one neighborhood in Beirut, Karantina, bear this out: “All eyes on Beirut” (ASHEKMAN), “Defeat is not destiny” (YAZAN), and “You starved us” (REK). True, no politicians are named and no political parties or religious denominations referenced. But for anyone with even a passing familiarity with Beirut’s historical and current political situation, the underlying messages of anger and disappointment are clear. When entire neighborhoods in the city remain, even now, without fully functional civil services and some are considered too dangerous for outsiders, and even Beirut residents, to visit due to sectarian violence, the political can never be fully eliminated from public discourse, even, and perhaps especially, when that discourse is conducted in the subversive medium of street art. Alongside the text-based works produced by artists such as SISKA, ASHEKMAN, and others, another, often anonymous, form of graffiti emerged in Beirut during the same years: stencil graffiti. These works are generally much smaller and placed in a wider variety of locations than the large-scale pieces discussed previously and they may bear a closer visual similarity to the work produced during the civil war. As Tala F. Saleh notes about the suitability of stencil graffiti to the Beirut context, “Its immediacy and ability to communicate ideas in a powerful form of expression transformed stencil graffiti into a true art form. It allowed it to become the most widespread form of graffiti found in major cities, especially those like Beirut, cities with a history of civil strife.”12 Historically, Beirut has not been a city where political views were aired publicly through protest or demonstrations. During the Lebanese civil war, it was graffiti, specifically stencils and rapidly executed slogans, that both articulated popular demands and marked the territory of political and religious factions. Graffiti became the de facto language for political speech during this period and, as seen in Cairo during the 2011 revolution, stencils were a particularly effective medium for spreading political messages and providing an easily accessible means of public expression, whether graphic or textual, throughout the city. Stencils provided a shortcut for those wishing to protest or comment on the political situation; even more anonymous than painted works, the stencils served to both amplify the message and mask the messenger. Given the close associations

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between graffiti and political tension and sectarianism, it is unsurprising that, in 2008, the government issued a directive to remove all political signs and graffiti from the streets of Beirut. The move was seen as part of a government drive to reframe the postwar city as a place free from past turmoil and looking toward a promising future. As Saleh explains, this directive had an important impact on the public visual culture of Beirut: it was the impetus for a move away from graffiti and toward street art. Street art is technical and artistic; it is larger in scale than stencils and slogans, and more likely to be painted on larger walls on main roads for greater visibility. Street art has the capability to shock and awe, a powerful form of art that is very attractive in most cases. .  .  . The difference between street art and the stencil graffiti in Beirut is that street art is not divided, it is patriotic, localized, colloquial, and most importantly found and drawn in Arabic letterforms and typography, something very specific to Lebanon. Beirut street art calls out for unity rather than division, calling for “One Lebanon” with no sectarianism.13

Saleh’s observations about this turning point in Lebanese street art and graffiti culture are accurate and relevant. However, before turning to the analysis of Beirut street art that will form the focus of the rest of the chapter, it is valuable to consider the ongoing presence of stencil graffiti as part of the visual culture of the streets of contemporary Beirut, for, even as large-scale street art, particularly in the Hamra and Gemmayzeh neighborhoods of the city, continues to proliferate and achieve local and international recognition, smaller and perhaps more subversive works of stencil graffiti are still visible in great numbers throughout the city. These works take many forms, from simple outlines of the cedar of Lebanon, to faces of political figures, to stenciled slogans and calls to action. They can also borrow symbols from other contexts, as seen in the summer of 2016 through the presence of the “Nefertiti with a gas mask” image popularized during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. The image is intriguing on several levels. Visually, it is a simple, yet arresting, work. It was compelling as a visual sign during the Egyptian revolution and remains so years later. In the Egyptian context, the mix of an immediately recognizable ancient symbol of Egypt with a twentieth-century symbol of war and death was a provocative combination. Transported to Beirut, the image retains it simple visual power, yet, of course, losing the immediate historical reference that Nefertiti provided in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. Why, then, import that particular image? As a visually clear and immediately recognizable symbol of the Egyptian revolution, “Nefertiti with a gas mask” declares an affiliation, or empathy, between the people of Beirut and the people of Egypt. By relying on a symbol that predates the emergence

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Figure 5 Nefertiti in a gas mask, Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author.

of either Christianity or Islam, the work bypasses the sectarian divisions that characterize modern Lebanon, despite the fact that it is lifted from a revolution led largely by the Muslim population of Egypt. Working at some remove from the events of January and February 2011, the Lebanese street artist who stenciled the image was surely aware Egypt’s revolution was not an unmitigated success story. Does the image, then, function also as a cautionary tale for Lebanon? Does it suggest that the people will always struggle in a country so historically divided and pressed on all sides by neighbors with their own political crises? In this way, “Nefertiti with a gas mask” might retain some of the symbolic valence of the stencils created during the civil war, serving as a silent reminder of the unspoken, yet persistent, challenges faced in Lebanese politics and society.

Martyrs and memorials In Martyrs’ Square, which once served as part of the demarcation line between the Muslim West Beirut and the Christian East Beirut, a statue stands to commemorate a group of anti-Ottoman martyrs: supporters of the Lebanese independence movement killed in 1916 by the Ottoman ruler Jamal Pasha. Martyrs’ Square is one of the, if not the only, most prominent public places in Beirut and the site of both protests and celebrations from the time of its construction in the nineteenth century. The decision to commemorate the

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1916 martyrs was taken as early as 1929, with the support of the French under whose mandate Lebanon fell at the time.14 In 1930, a sculpture carved from local limestone by the Lebanese artist Yussef Hoayek was unveiled in the square and praised by critics in the Beirut press for being authentically Lebanese: “The stone was Lebanese, the hand that sculpted it was pure Lebanese, and the thought that created it and the imagination that realized it were Lebanese.”15 The sculpture itself depicted two women, symbolizing the Christian and Muslim communities, standing across from each other, hands outstretched and resting on a vessel, or urn. The women were carved in the minimalist, blocky style common to much public sculpture of the 1930s and are supported by a simple limestone plinth, on which was carved an image of a cedar tree, the national symbol of Lebanon. Hoayek’s sculpture eschewed the militaristic and masculine tendencies prevalent in many memorials of the time and focused instead on quiet reflection, recognizing not only the men who sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom but the women left behind, whose collective efforts would continue to bind the country together in support of national identity and purpose. Following the establishment of Lebanese independence in 1943, Hoayek’s memorial lost its public appeal due to its apparent lack of heroism.16 Following many cries for its removal as well as an act of vandalism in 1948, the sculpture was finally removed sometime around 1953. By 1956, a design for a new memorial by the Lebanese engineer and architect Sami Abdel Baki was unveiled and the commission to execute the sculpture was awarded to Italian artist Marino Mazzacurati; the memorial was inaugurated in 1960. It is this bronze figural group—which both recognizes the sacrifice of the martyrs and offers hope of their glorious redemption—that still occupies pride of place in Martyrs’ Square today. However, even this new, heroic monument bears the literal marks of Lebanon’s ongoing strife. Heavily damaged during the 1975–90 civil war, the memorial was restored at the Universite de Saint-Esprit de Kaslik in 1996 and many of the bullet holes scarring its surface were retained as reminders of the war.17 The statue was finally returned to its place in Martyrs’ Square in July 2004 and to this date retains its location, even while Solidere’s downtown reconstruction swirls around and ever closer to the square. The role of memorial sculpture within Lebanon has been insightfully addressed by Lucia Volk in her book Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon. Writing of the restoration and replacement of the monument, she notes, The newly restored bodies retained the evidence of civil war violence, symbolizing the injuries sustained by thousands of Lebanese citizens. Despite

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the wounds, the nation is still standing! The statue of the “wounded nation” represented defiance in the face of medical odds and thereby symbolized that Lebanon was a nation of survivors.18

Thus, Martyrs’ Square and its monument become symbols not only of a historical and deeply felt tradition of sacrifice for country and religion but also of a new Lebanon, one in which, perhaps, sectarian differences will be wiped away, replaced by a vibrant and thriving civic identity. That such an outcome seems unlikely, at least in the near future, can be read in the decaying and decrepit landscape of urban Beirut the further one ventures downtown. The public commemoration of martyrs forms an important component of Lebanon’s street art, albeit a less internationally visible one. Although most images of martyrs are created on posters rather than painted murals, their ubiquitous presence in certain areas merits consideration of their effect as street art. The martyr image is both a common and a problematic feature of contemporary street art in the Middle East. Not only the visual styles of various martyr portraits but also their means of production and display shape their impact within the public sphere. In countries such as Iran, images of martyrs form a pervasive and integral component of the visual culture of the city; in a country such as the UAE, commemoration of martyrdom, while of great religious and national significance, is kept to certain areas and would not appear as a subject of street or public art. Scale of representation also makes a difference. There is a gap between the visual impact of a large-scale martyr’s portrait by Ganzeer on the streets of Cairo and an anonymously designed poster of a Hizbollah martyr on the walls of a Beirut suburb. The works draw on different visual traditions and speak to different audiences. Since 2012, Hizbollah militia members have been crossing the Lebanese border into Syria to fight on the side of President Bashar al-Assad. Many of these young, Shiite men have been killed in the fighting (up to 1,500 as of mid-2016) and, as is tradition in Muslim society, they are considered martyrs for the faith. As such, they are the subjects not only of private but of public commemoration in the neighborhoods from which they came; the Hizbollah hold commemoration ceremonies in suburbs of southern Beirut. The medium of choice for these memorial images is a cheaply printed poster, sometimes designed by the young fighter himself, which features an image of the martyr in one of a variety of standard poses and backgrounds.19 Some young men are shown smiling and carefree; others already gaze sternly ahead as if acknowledging and accepting their fate. Many hold their weapons. Some are shown in front of stock backgrounds such as the Syrian Desert or

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a Hizbollah banner; others incorporate the portrait of Hizbollah leaders as a hovering presence behind the martyr’s shoulder. All contribute to a collective sense of shared sacrifice and religious and social pride. As during the First and Second World Wars, when households would display an emblem such as a service flag to indicate the brave sacrifice of one or more men of the family in the war, the households of martyrs proudly bear their figurative representation while also sharing that figure with the community through reproductions of the image. In this way, the martyr becomes both a familial and a communal symbol of sacrifice and pride. The relatively small number of Hizbollah men lost during the Syrian conflict and the small and tight-knit nature of the communities from which they come imbue the images with a sense of personal loss that is shared by all. The subject and visual style of these posters, when considered against the celebrated street art images that form the basis of the remainder of this chapter, are themselves a stark reminder of the deep sectarian divisions and disparities of wealth, opportunity, and political voice that run throughout Lebanese society.

Jad El Khoury and the place of memory The Martyrs’ Memorial is just one of dozens of examples of sites throughout Beirut where the appropriate memorialization of the visual legacy of conflict remains an issue of debate. Such sites have at times become a locus for the development of street art projects, whether proposed or realized. Not far from Martyrs’ Square stands the Holiday Inn, a bullet-riddled and decaying structure that is emblematic not only of the city’s tortured past but also of its uncertain future. Strategically situated near the Green Line (the demarcation line between East and West Beirut which ran through Martyrs’ Square) and also in close proximity to the waterfront, the newly built Holiday Inn became a critical site in the so-called “war of the hotels” which lasted from October 1975 to March 1976 and claimed over 1,000 lives.20 The current owners of the building cannot decide on its future disposition and so it remains vacant, an unwitting memorial to the chaos of the war. Not only is entry to the hotel barred, even photographing its exterior is prohibited, at least from close enough range that the photographer can be spotted by the security forces stationed outside. Yet the building’s history and current state attracted the Lebanese street artist Jad El Khoury, who in November 2015 obtained permission to enter the abandoned site and painted blue and white cartoonish figures around the bullet holes on one exterior wall of the building. Although the work was painted over within a month, his actions

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occasioned immediate and polarizing responses from the public as well as from artists, critics, and art and architectural historians.21 Among these, Lebanese filmmaker, artist, and art historian Gregory Buchakjian expressed particular anger at what he saw as: “An outrage to Beirut, an outrage to memory, an outrage to everything!”22 Buchakjian views Khoury’s action of painting on the Holiday Inn as distinct from the proliferation of graffiti on what might be seen as similar markers of trauma, conflict, and memory such as the Berlin Wall or the separation wall between Israel and Palestine. For him, this distinction lies in what he perceives as the exclusive and privileged nature of Khoury’s intervention as opposed to the spontaneous and open process of layering the other spaces with graffiti. As Buchakjian says, “What’s irritating is that this building is completely inaccessible. It’s very difficult to enter, and this guy has the permission, and he gives himself the privilege of painting it from top to bottom. Street art is not an art of the privileged.”23 In addition to the frustration expressed by Buchakjian at Khoury’s seeming waste of the opportunity to enter the space of the Holiday Inn, he also hints at what other critics of Khoury’s work have objected to: the artist’s reliance on humor as the driving force behind his work. While artists and others can draw on humor as a coping mechanism or even as a strategy to allow themselves and their audience to confront subjects which would otherwise be too difficult to approach, this strategy is never an easy one to follow. Those artists who do this most successfully are effective because of the strength of the ideas they are pursuing. When James Rosenquist in his painting F-111 (1964–65) used imagery from advertising and consumer culture, painted in day-glo colors, and layered a nuclear explosion onto emblems of military power, such as the F-111 fighter jet, he was creating an image that not only visually delighted the viewer but offered a cutting commentary on the connections between the war in Vietnam and the consumerist society of the United States. The photograph Walking House (1989) by Laurie Simmons shows the legs of a female mannequin with a model of a house placed where the head and body should be. This seemingly droll image serves less as an object of humor and more as a reminder of the ways in which women have been subsumed by their roles as housewives and nurturers, their individual identities lost in the service of “good housekeeping.” When Polish artist Zbigniew Libera created his Lego concentration camp in 1996, it drew both criticism and praise from the art world. The work has subsequently been shown in international exhibitions in major museums and a copy was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Libera’s dark humor succeeds because it forces a confrontation and discussion of issues that we would often prefer to ignore. Good art can use humor to provoke, but it provokes in the service of

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opening dialogue. The criticism surrounding Khoury’s work may stem from an underlying question of whether his artwork is successful in its use of humor to either provide an acceptable outlet for feelings of distress over Lebanon’s history of conflict or provoke useful conversation about that history. Although Khoury has created similar works on bullet-scarred buildings, including a well-known piece located not far from the Holiday Inn, these have attracted neither the attention nor the vitriol directed toward the hotel project.24 Khoury himself expressed surprise at the backlash: “It was really surprising. . . . But I understand that many people will see it like I am doodling over history, which is not the case. I opened up a debate that was already there—should we fix

Figure 6 Jad El Khoury, Mural on a bombed-out building, Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author.

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all the scars of the war, or should we keep them?”25 The work on the Holiday Inn was part of a larger project which Khoury titled War Peace, which he began in August 2015 with what he described as an illegal and clandestine “art attack” on another bullet-scarred high-rise in downtown Beirut, not far from the Holiday Inn.26 Khoury refers to the characters which populate his works as “Potato Nose” and their cartoonish, unsophisticated shapes are reminiscent of the doodles he has done for years. The artist intends the works to convey a sense of happiness or humor amid the reminders of war; yet, whether consciously or not, he seems also to recognize the potential contradictions in his project: I didn’t live the brutality of war, but these chaotic battle traces gives [sic] me an idea of the barbarity that took place in my beloved city [B]eirut. [F]or the old generation who witnessed this barbarism it’s time to move on at the same time for those who don’t know what is to be living in a wartime the traces should be preserved to give them an image of the craziness of the situation.27

For Khoury, who was born in 1988, at the end of the fifteen-year conflict, it may be difficult to recognize that those whom he refers to as the “older generation” who lived through and remember may be still in their forties and fifties, and actively struggling with questions of the appropriate use and reuse of markers of a conflict that is still very present to them. Indeed Gregory Buchakjian, who was born in 1971, belongs to the generation of those who came of age during the civil war and who are now in a position not only to reflect on its legacy but to actively participate in the development of a renewed and renovated Beirut. Buchakjian’s own work, particularly his photographic project Abandoned Dwellings in Beirut (begun 2009), is concerned with capturing the vanishing traces of Beirut’s wartorn legacy as these buildings are reclaimed by developers and speculators and razed or renovated to make room for the new, restored, and beautified Beirut.28 For Buchakjian, the buildings take on a memorial quality; for Khoury, that quality is tacitly acknowledged, but in his insistence on transforming the buildings into sites of whimsy and humor he destabilizes, perhaps even destroys, their memorial function, turning the walls into sites of play rather than purpose. Perhaps Lebanon, Beirut particularly, still occupies a cultural and psychological space analogous to that of post–Second World War Germany, in which artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter cautiously and, sometimes, obliquely explored the memory and trauma of the war while acknowledging its ongoing reverberations in German society. Kiefer and Richter, as well as other artists of their generation, used muted symbols and abstraction to pursue the memory work inherent in their paintings. There is a subtlety to their explorations of the

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trauma of the past; viewers must assume some responsibility in interpreting the images and pushing past their surfaces to fully engage with the ideas and memories the artists wish to evoke. Khoury’s street art is anything but subtle and may thus be seen by some as too much, too soon, pushing a still divided and grieving nation to see humor where pain is too recent. Khoury is a Lebanese Christian who grew up in the mountains of Chouf, the historical home of the Christian population of Lebanon. The mountain region is strongly linked to the social and religious identity of the Christian population, as well as to that of the Druze, a sect that identifies as an offshoot of Islam but about whose religious practices and beliefs little is truly known. While Christians and Druze cohabit the mountains (albeit not always peacefully), Muslims are generally residents of other regions of Lebanon such as the coast and the Bek’aa valley in the center of the country. The animosity between the Christian and the Muslim populations is, of course, at the heart of the civil war in Lebanon and the psychological rift and scars remain apparent for many. Even Khoury has acknowledged that he does not easily relate to Muslims nor count them among his acquaintances. That such an admission could be made publicly and without critical comment is astonishing in many ways, that its potential implications for Khoury’s art are also ignored is, in my view, problematic. When Khoury says that he wants to make people laugh with his work, to create sites of amusement among the war-scarred ruins of Beirut, one has to wonder for whose amusement he is striving. Would a Muslim resident of the city be amused by one of Khoury’s latest projects, Single Man, in which the artist continues to paint his large-scale doodles but this time with the addition of a noticeable male figure painted in color against an otherwise monochrome background? The figure is depicted in Khoury’s cartoon-like style but is wearing traditional Arab dress (kandura and gutra) and looks out with some trepidation from the mass of figures and random shapes behind him. Khoury has made Single Man paintings in Beirut and Kuwait; a description of the Kuwait project on the Art Kuwait website reads as follows: In Lebanon:  A Single Man is isolated by choice. A Single Man has rejected the society he lives in, he has rejected their man-made rules which have molded him, restricted him, and birthed him with an innate hatred of others. Taking a step back, he gains consciousness of his individuality. He has taken a breath and taken time to gain perspective on the chaos. Single Man works on himself from within and reflects on how this can change his community, one he both loves and loathes. Single Man’s struggle with his relationship to society is one faced by all . . . individually.

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In Kuwait: This same guy is trying to fit in a new environment. This time he’s in Kuwait between the people, wearing their traditional uniform hoping that it will make his mission easier. Single Man  is not just representing the artist, it represents most of the young generation in Lebanon who is tired from this chaos that we’re living, and immigration to a new country became their target in life.29

This description is accompanied by a photo of Khoury in Kuwait wearing, like his subject, the kandura and gutra favored by Kuwaiti men. What is this act of camouflage intended to represent? What of the language of difference, of needing to wear a “uniform” to “fit in”? The statement of the meaning of the figure in Lebanon suggests, perhaps, recognition of deep-seated animosity and movement toward reconciliation. However, how is that reconciliation to be seen as legitimate when its enactment in the foreign space of a Muslim-majority country is seen through the lens of disguise and deception? Khoury, like many street artists, has also ventured into the world of commercial collaboration as one of three artists commissioned to design a wine bottle label for Lebanese vineyard Ixsir for the 2016 holiday season. Ixsir’s Altitudes wine is promoted as sourced from, and deeply connected to, the Lebanese mountains, and the artists who designed the limited edition labels were to celebrate the mountains with their designs.30 As previously mentioned, Khoury’s background as a Lebanese Christian affiliates him with the mountain region, perhaps making him a particularly appropriate choice for the project. The other two artists selected for the project were the graphic novelist and illustrator Zeina Abirached and graphic designer Dima Boulard. Abirached attracted critical attention and support in 2012 for her graphic novel A Game for Swallows (her first book to be translated into English), which reflected on her childhood in Beirut during the civil war. Her second graphic novel, I Remember Beirut, published in the United States in 2014, continued this theme and she has become known for her ability to use a child’s perspective to capture some of the most complex and difficult memories of that period in Lebanon’s history. Highlighting the ongoing presence and importance of graffiti in the city of Beirut during and after the war is the fact that the title A Game for Swallows was taken “from graffiti written on a wall in what was once no man’s land.” It says, “To die, to leave, to return, this is a game for swallows (Florian).”31 Returning to Beirut years later, Abirached remarked on the wall’s destruction and how strange it was for her to come back and not see that graffiti—the marker of her experience of the city during the war. The changes in Beirut both interest and

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concern Abirached: “When I saw the wall of Florian has been destroyed I felt like the Beirut of my childhood and the Beirut I knew was completely gone. It’s not only about nostalgia, it’s also about what is replacing the things that were so particular to the city. I feel I’m too pessimistic.”32 Abirached’s attachment to the physical and architectural past of the city informs her work in ways that are likely impossible for a younger artist such as Khoury. Yet her respect and even nostalgia for the unique and identifiable features of the urban landscape of Beirut permit a more nuanced and effective reflection on the city. Where Khoury uses the buildings of Beirut for his own, contemporary, purposes, Abirached recognizes them for their historical and cultural value as markers of Beirut’s past and, perhaps, guides to its future.

Promoting positive street art in Beirut An artist who has also received widespread attention, but perhaps attracted less criticism than Khoury, is Yazan Halwani, a young street artist whose portraits of Lebanese cultural icons have gained popularity and admiration in the past few years. Halwani began painting in the streets in his early teens and, in his words, initially created “Western-style graffiti with its flashy colours, the wild styles, the tagging” but found that such work lacked the sense of identity that he was seeking.33 He shifted his focus from the West and turned instead to Arabic calligraphy as a source of inspiration. A story about how he borrowed a book of calligraphy from his uncle and from that encounter developed his now-signature style has become almost legend, often repeated in profiles and interviews with the artist.34 His current works feature portraits surrounded by calligraphic marks; these are not necessarily recognizable letters or words, but always recognizable as Arabic calligraphy. Among his more famous creations are portraits of the Lebanese singers Sabah and Fairouz as well as one of a homeless man, Ali Abdullah, who died on the street in 2013 during one of Beirut’s coldest winters. Despite the seeming disjunction between subjects— musical icons versus unknown homeless men—in each instance Halwani seeks to memorialize the figure, to set them up as reminders of the complex social patterns of Lebanon. Halwani’s use of calligraffiti, the term coined in 1984 exhibition of the same name at Leila Heller Gallery in New York, puts him in the company of acknowledged masters of the genre, such as the French-Tunisian eL Seed. It also links him to a historical tradition and situates his work both visually

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Figure 7 Halwani, Lebanese singer Sabah, Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author.

and conceptually within a certain framework. The use of Arabic calligraphy or text in street art is a symbol of national or regional pride—it honors and even renews traditional culture in ways that operate against a blind adoption of Western style that is popularized by social media, films, Western stores, music, and so on. Halwani sees his street art style as offering a different model for a younger generation of artists: “The graffiti mentality of the West is centered on getting up and becoming famous, and kids here find that to be really cool, and they all want to be gangsters. So when I do my graffiti and I see kids mimicking it, I consider it a small victory. I influence them to adopt their own culture and not the culture of the West.”35

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The duo ASHEKMAN also see the use of Arabic text in their work as a distinct strategy to engage newly emerging street artists with a specific geographical and cultural identity: “We have this mission, all over the region and especially with the younger generation. . . . We have a mission to make Arabic cool again.”36 The pair also employ elements of humor and satire in their work and do not shy away from making subtle, yet pointed, political statements. This is seen in a large work on the main thoroughfare of Boulevard du Président Fouad Chéhab that depicts a raised arm wearing a Kermit the Frog hand puppet. On either side of Kermit’s face is large, bright red Arabic script, which reads “to be free or not to be.” The punning phrase can be read as a choice or as a punishment; lack of freedom equals nonexistence. The dual nature of the tag means it is difficult to insist on a political reading; yet, anyone familiar with ASHEKMAN’s work would immediately recognize the intent. As mentioned previously, ASHEKMAN were among a group of artists whose pithy, painted slogans such as “All eyes on Beirut” were vague enough to escape immediate censure but pointed enough to resonate as political calls to attention, if not action. The brothers’ ability to walk a fine line between acceptability and provocation is undoubtedly a large part of the appeal of their work and a not insignificant factor in its general acceptance on the part

Figure 8 ASHEKMAN, “To be free or not to be,” Beirut, Lebanon. Photo credit: Author.

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of both the general public and the authorities. By painting Kermit the Frog, appropriating a symbol from American popular culture and one associated with childhood, ASHEKMAN inject an element of banality into the work that also serves to mitigate its barbed message. Yet, Kermit and indeed all of the muppets achieved a popularity which went far beyond children, delighting adult viewers of the television show and subsequent films. In the world of the muppets, Kermit stood as a sort of everyman, at once the star of the show and yet not quite sure of himself, not always coming out on top. Kermit symbolizes someone trying to find themselves, but not quite there yet; perhaps like Lebanon itself. To fully identify and unify as a nation, the Lebanese people need to find the freedom to be themselves, in all the complexity and diversity of their society. A number of street art collectives have emerged in Beirut in recent years, each with the aim of using street art as a means to beautify sections of the city and/ or to promote a cause. One of the earliest such groups was Dihzayhners, who, in 2012, undertook a project to paint the Mar Mikhael stairs in the Achrafieh neighborhood with colorful, geometric forms.37 The stairs, which have long formed a shortcut for local residents, subsequently became something of a tourist destination and the original painting has been refreshed at various times over the years. The Achrafieh neighborhood, Mar Mikhael street in particular, has since become a locus for street art production, with pieces by many of Beirut’s most famous street artists as well as contributions by anonymous or lesser known artists. Along with Hamra and Gemmayzeh, Mar Mikhael is considered a must-visit destination for those seeking the best street art in Beirut. That there are numerous sources for tourists wanting to see street art in Beirut speaks to a rising trend that will be discussed further in later chapters: the concept of street art as a magnet for tourism, or at least as one of a number of highlights for visitors to a city. The fact that Beirut has become known as one of the best places in the Middle East to find street art has undoubtedly contributed to the relaxed vigilance on the part of municipal authorities that might otherwise be concerned to erase the work that is produced. As long as the pieces are not overtly political, they often stay for years and become a more permanent part of the urban fabric of the city. When, like the Mar Mikhael stairs, they begin to fade and are repainted, sometimes in ways that are different from the original design, the street art becomes a part of the shifting landscape of the city. Unlike a permanent memorial structure, for example, it bears the marks of time and space and its shifting visual identity is part of what gives the work interest and staying power. The art itself becomes part of an ongoing performance of creativity and identity,

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often linked to a particular neighborhood and sometimes to a particular group of artists, which changes it from a static landmark to a fluid representation of the life of a community. Another street art collective, this one with a specific mission, is Chain Effect. The group wants to use street art as a means of promoting cycling as a viable alternative means of transportation in a city plagued with heavy traffic.38 Using colorful murals combined with pithy sayings such as “If you were on a bike, you’d have gotten home a long time ago,” the group works in collaboration with other collectives aimed at encouraging more people to give cycling a try. That Chain Effect has specifically adopted street art as a means of spreading their message suggests that the proliferation of the medium within Beirut encourages people to view it as a legitimate means for expressing ideas and galvanizing public opinion. Thus, contemporary street art in Beirut can fulfill some of the same functions as the civil war graffiti in that it offers a voice in the public square and advocates for a certain position; the difference, of course, is that arguing for cycling as a sustainable means of twenty-first-century transportation is a far cry from the political messages spread by the earlier graffiti. If we consider street art as part of a larger concept of urban art, or urban interventions, the Chain Effect project has a counterpart, albeit one with a more somber focus, in the Ghost Bike project that began in St. Louis in 2003 and has since expanded throughout the United States and internationally. In this project, white painted bicycles are placed as memorials in locations where cyclists have been hit or killed on the street. While these white bikes serve as a sobering reminder of one of the realities that might accompany Chain Effect’s desired increase in the number of cycles on the streets of Beirut, it could also serve as a catalyst to simultaneously increase the use of bicycles by increasing motorist awareness and bicycle safety. Whether viewed as street art or some other type of urban production, the ghost bikes share an aim of raising awareness and increasing dialogue that may be seen in Chain Effect’s murals. A recent project in Beirut’s Ouzai neighborhood also employs street art in a socially motivated way: in this instance, the goal is to beautify a historically rundown and neglected area through the production of dozens of murals by local and international artists. Dubbed “Ouzville,” the project is not run by a collective per se, but does involve the contributions of numerous artists as well as support from local residents. Ayad Nasser, the driving force behind the project, is not a street artist himself but sees the production of the colorful murals as a way to “break the stereotype” of Ouzai as an irredeemable neighborhood, to be avoided if possible.39 As such, the Ouzai project fits a model of street art projects as urban

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renewal, or reclamation, activities. This use of street art to both draw attention to and aesthetically improve drab, often impoverished, neighborhoods has a long history in the United States and is emerging as a popular practice in the Middle East, as seen, for example, in the Djerbahood project discussed later in this volume.40 The Ouzai project can be viewed not only as a street art project but also as an environmental reclamation, another type of urban intervention that has been gathering momentum in the past several years. Environmental reclamation projects can range from relatively large-scale efforts, such as the repurposing of vacant lots as community gardens (sometimes referred to as guerilla gardening) to much smaller initiatives such as yarn bombing. In 2005, the artist Shannon Spanhake created A Tijuana Garden, in Tijuana, Mexico, by planting flowers in the myriad potholes that dotted the streets of the city. Ellen Harvey developed The New York Beautification project, in which she placed small, but beautifully executed and detailed, landscape paintings in random but run-down settings throughout the city. In the Birds 2000 Series Dan Witz also placed detailed and colorful small paintings, in this case, of birds, in locations around New York. A related large-scale project with a much longer history is the Mural Arts Program in Philadelphia. Established in 1984 as the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network, Mural Arts is now one of the largest, nonprofit public arts programs in the country, developing between 50 and 100 projects each year. The core of the program is the production of large-scale murals, often in some of the most poverty-stricken and violent areas of Philadelphia.41 The engagement of local residents, particularly young people, in the creation of the murals and the ensuing community dialogue is intended to foreground the murals as playing a key role in creating community spirit and identity, often in the face of incredible social and personal challenges. The Philadelphia murals have now become one of the highlights of the city, and thousands of people participate in organized tours to see the works, in addition to the millions of people, both residents and tourists, who encounter the murals throughout the city. Although response to such projects is often very positive, there can be concerns, as have been raised in Ouzai, that merely beautifying a neighborhood does not make up for a lack of substantive infrastructure improvements and the provision of basic services that should be the responsibility of local governments. When street artists, particularly those from abroad, come into a community for a short period to complete a project, it does not necessarily ensure a sustained level of community development and improvement, nor does it ensure that there will be follow-up in terms of refreshing peeling paint or dealing with other types of damage. There is, of course, an argument to be made that street art, as an inherently ephemeral

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medium, should simply be allowed to deteriorate and eventually disappear; however, that argument is complicated when the art has been produced with the explicit purpose of urban beautification and the implicit promise of a lasting aesthetic improvement. In the context of events such as the Arab Spring, the ephemerality of revolutionary street art in places like Cairo, in essence, makes sense; the nature of the events that precipitated the creation of the street art is transient and therefore the transience of the street art itself seems justified. While the anger and frustration that led to the protests around the Middle East have not disappeared, there is an ebb and flow to their public expression and the changing nature and presence of street art in the cities of the region appears to reflect that. In Beirut, however, where street art is at least beginning to take on other roles beyond that of political expression, including promoting a cultural identity for the city and contributing to urban gentrification, its permanence, or at least continued production of street art in the city, is more critical.

3

Palestine: Local and International Street Art on the Separation Barrier

A full account of the long and complicated history of conflict between Israel and the Palestinian territories is far beyond the scope of this study. It is necessary, however, to recount at least some of the particular history and impact of the establishment of a physical separation between the two entities, as it is this physical separation, namely in the form of the Israeli-built wall between Israel and sections of the West Bank, that forms the primary canvas for street art in Palestine. The modern division, or separation, of the territories of Israel and Palestine has its origins in the execution in 1916 of the infamous SykesPicot agreement. A surprisingly brief document, considering its lengthy and devastating regional impact, the Sykes-Picot agreement established an Arab state divided and administered primarily by France and Great Britain with a small area under international rule. The agreement reads in part: That France and Great Britain are prepared to recognize and protect an independent Arab states [sic] or a confederation of Arab states (a) and (b) marked on the annexed map, under the suzerainty of an Arab chief. That in area (a) France, and in area (b) Great Britain, shall have priority of right of enterprise and local loans. That in area (a) France, and in area (b) Great Britain, shall alone supply advisers or foreign functionaries at the request of the Arab state or confederation of Arab states. That in the blue area France, and in the red area Great Britain, shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab state or confederation of Arab states.1

The nominal concession to the “suzerainty of an Arab chief ” did little in theory or practice to mitigate the direct administrative control of the region by the European powers authorized in the next section of the document. Anyone familiar with the activities of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) in the region prior to and

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during the First World War is aware of the contested history of the development of this agreement and the extreme distaste with which it was received in the Arab world. The establishment of French and British control was seen as a betrayal of earlier promises of Arab sovereignty negotiated by Lawrence and, as such, set the stage for a contentious and complicated relationship that continued for the next five decades.2 Although the Sykes-Picot map was to be subsequently redrawn as various countries grappled for power in the wake of the collapse of the Ottoman empire, one of its fundamental flaws was the way in which regions were divided with little or no regard for existing tribal or political identities, an oversight which exacerbated the negative impacts of an already flawed plan.3 While the Sykes-Picot agreement set the stage for the generations of turmoil that has engulfed the Middle East region as a whole, it was another statement produced a year later that set Israel and Palestine on their current path of destruction and crisis. While not a formal treaty or political document, British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour’s statement of support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine was a defining moment in the history of Jewish/Palestinian relations in the Middle East. Made in a letter dated November 2, 1917, from Balfour to Walter Rothschild (Second Baron Rothschild) a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, the statement read: His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing nonJewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.4

In one lengthy sentence, Balfour undermined the spirit of the previous year’s SykesPicot agreement, which, flawed as it was, at least acknowledged the provision for a unified Arab state. In this way, Balfour’s declaration provided support for a nascent Zionist cause that was to result in the establishment of the modern State of Israel at the expense of Arab (Palestinian) territorial, legal, and human rights. The State of Israel was neither formally declared nor recognized until May 14, 1948, when David Ben Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel and US president Harry S. Truman recognized the nation. Despite Balfour’s early support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine and British approval of the same, the practical and economic concerns of the British mandate in Palestine held sway between 1917 and 1948 as the British did not wish to cause

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any more discontent among the Arab leaders in the region. However, with the end of the Second World War and the question of what to do with a traumatized and displaced population of European Jews looming large on the world political stage, the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine appeared, in 1948, to be the most logical and expedient course of action. Intermittent fighting between Arab and Jewish Palestinians had broken out as early as 1947 when “United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 (also known as the Partition Resolution) that would divide Great Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948.”5 This resolution, despite its nod to impartiality in declaring that the religious sites in and around Jerusalem would remain under international control administered by the United Nations, was deemed unacceptable by Palestinian Arabs who saw the agreement as favoring Jewish Arabs and immigrant Jews while relegating the Palestinian Arabs to a reduced state in their ancestral homeland. With the official signing of the declaration of statehood in May 1948, and the international recognition of the new State of Israel, Arab Palestinians increased their armed resistance to the Jewish Palestinian population and to the establishment of two states in Palestine. The Arab Palestinians launched the first major offensive, an air attack on Tel Aviv, on the night of the declaration on May 14. The fighting continued until 1949 and was joined, at points, by forces from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, as well as British-trained forces from Transjordan. The armistice lines agreed to in February 1949 gave Israel some territory originally assigned to the Palestinians in the 1948 resolution and established Egyptian control over the Gaza Strip and Jordanian control over the West Bank. These lines remained in force until 1967. The events leading to the Six-Day War, or Arab-Israeli War, of June 1967 have their roots, of course, in the division of the Palestinian territory in 1948 and the 1967 conflict was the direct result of subsequent international conflicts over the division of territory in the Sinai Peninsula, notably the 1956 Suez War. Between June 5 and June 10, Israel defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. The Palestinians suffered a large number of casualties (approximately 20,000 Palestinian troops killed as opposed to approximately 1,000 Israeli troops killed); an additional critical effect of the war was the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from the West Bank and of Syrian refugees from the Golan Heights. Following the violence, and after several rejected attempts at peace negotiations brokered by the Soviet Union and Latin America, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 242 on November 22, which called for Israel’s withdrawal from “territories occupied in the recent conflict”

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in exchange for “termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”6 It is this resolution which has formed the basis for subsequent US and international attempts to establish a “land for peace” settlement between Palestine and Israel, efforts which culminated in the ultimately unsuccessful Oslo accords of 1993. The initial Oslo Accord was established “on September 13, 1993, [when] Israeli Prime Minister  Yitzhak Rabin  and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Negotiator Mahmoud Abbas signed a Declaration of Principles on Interim SelfGovernment Arrangements. . . . Israel accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians, and the PLO renounced terrorism and recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace. Both sides agreed that a Palestinian Authority (PA) would be established and assume governing responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five-year period. Then, permanent status talks on the issues of borders, refugees, and Jerusalem would be held. The period from 1993 to 2000 would see little progress in this regard, despite the negotiation of Oslo II in 1995 and various exchanges of control of portions of Israeli and Palestinian territories throughout the decade. Tensions continued to mount, inflamed by events such as the 1995 assassination of Israeli prime minister Rabin, and brought to a head on September 28, 2000, with the visit of Israeli Likud party leader Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The subsequent, bloody conflict was known as the al-Aqsa Intifada, after the Arab name for the Temple Mount. This intense period of violence served, in conjunction with the setbacks of previous years, to destabilize efforts at peacemaking in ways that have remained the norm, and have even been exacerbated, in the past sixteen years.

Banksy in Palestine: International street art on the separation barrier Although street art has been present on the separation wall between the Palestinian territories and Israel since the building of the barrier (the first segment was completed in 2003), a 2005 trip by the (in)famous street artist Banksy drew heightened attention to the work and encouraged a proliferation of images on the wall. During Banksy’s 2005 trip to the West Bank barrier, he painted a series of nine images that called attention to the wall’s function of, in his words, “turn[ing] Palestine into the world’s largest open-air  prison.”7 These ranged from a simple stencil of a girl holding a bunch of balloons which

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Figure 9 Separation barrier between Israel and Palestine. Photo credit: Author.

lift her off the ground in an apparent attempt to float over the wall, to more visually complex trompe l’oeil paintings which seemed to open the wall onto a vista of sandy beaches and palm trees. Banksy reported that he was harassed at least once by an Israeli soldier who encountered him while painting and on his website shared a conversation with a Palestinian man which has been often repeated in discussions of the Palestine project: Old man: You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful. Me [Banksy]: Thanks. Old man: We don’t want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home.8

Many critics have written approvingly of Banksy’s choice to embed art commenting on the Palestinian and Israeli divide directly at the physical site of that divide; however, this quote represents another, and not unusual, opinion of any attempts to beautify the separation wall. That Banksy himself shares the exchange may act as an acknowledgment of the complicated responses surrounding his politicized imagery and to give space to dissenting as well as supporting voices. Nonetheless, the Palestinian man’s derision deterred neither Banksy nor the many international street artists who came to Palestine in the wake of Banksy’s visit to make their own mark on the separation wall. Of course, Palestinian street artists, as well, became active contributors to the growing

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body of work on the separation wall and the relatively blank canvas that Banksy encountered in 2005 has today become a site of overlapping and sometimes competing images commenting on the conflict and the restrictions placed on Palestinian citizens. Banksy returned to Palestine on two other occasions after his 2005 visit. In 2007 he and several international and Palestinian artists created a number of new paintings in Bethlehem. In addition to the new street images, Banksy also organized Santa’s Ghetto, a temporary exhibition and sale of works by various artists that was set up in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, next to the Church of the Nativity. The Santa’s Ghetto concept was six years old by that time; since 2001, Banksy had created a pop-up gallery with the same name in London each December to sell affordably priced works by himself and other urban artists.9 By 2007, the annual shop had become so well known and popular that its removal to Bethlehem received substantial attention from the UK and the international press. The Bethlehem iteration of Santa’s Ghetto is a clear example of the Banksy effect in operation. Banksy’s own participation in the event did much to encourage attention and the success of the operation relied on the fact that the artist had already capitalized on his growing notoriety and popular appeal to set up a successful model in London. Importantly, the shops in both London and

Figure 10 Banksy, Dove, 2007, Bethlehem, Palestine. Photo credit: Author.

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Bethlehem not only exhibited works by Banksy himself but featured a number of street and urban artists who were able to find an audience and market for their work through Banksy’s banner. If you wanted to buy one of the works on display in Bethlehem you had to do so by placing a bid on site at the pop-up gallery. One of the participating artists, Peter Kennard, wrote, “This was important, because Bethlehem is being starved of its tourist trade as visitors are bussed in to see the Church of the Nativity and bussed out an hour later back to Israel. All proceeds from the sale, which exceeded $1m, went to local charities.”10 While the Banksy effect (briefly, the rise in price and popularity of street art that has paralleled Banksy’s ascendance), along with the political commitment of Banksy and a group of like-minded artists, appears to have generated a positive result in the case of the Santa’s Ghetto project, his work in Palestine subsequently became embroiled in a controversy that arguably also had its roots in the Banksy effect. In August 2011, the Keszler Gallery opened an exhibition in Southampton, New York, that included two Banksy works that had been removed from their original Bethlehem locations. The works, referred to as Stop & Search and Wet Dog, had been created during the 2007 visit and removed from their original locations shortly thereafter. The two works were never authenticated by Pest Control, the PR arm of the Banksy operation, and the gallery came under substantial scrutiny for how they were acquired and criticism for putting them up for sale.11 Writing in the British newspaper Independent, Guy Adams summarizes the controversy: “The debate highlights the problems that emerge when the soaring contemporary art market turns what some view as petty vandalism into a prized commodity. These days, Banksy pieces can fetch as much as $1.9m, meaning that his public works are often thought to be worth more than the building they originally graced.”12 In short, the Keszler show highlights a negative outcome of the Banksy effect. Banksy’s next project in the Palestinian territories was undertaken in Gaza in early 2015 when he apparently snuck into the city through a network of tunnels in order to paint four new works, including a text-only piece that reads “If we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless we side with the powerful—we don’t remain neutral.” While his intention to draw attention to the plight of the citizens of Gaza appears genuine, Banksy retains a sense of irony and humor with comments such as this: referring to a painting of a kitten playing with a ball of rusted wire, he remarks, “I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website—but on the internet people only look at pictures of kittens.”13 Only a few months after the works were created, however, the greed and opportunism that sometimes follow Banksy’s

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work appear to have surfaced in Gaza. In April, various news outlets began to report that the family on whose abandoned house Banksy had painted the work Bomb Damage had sold the piece (painted on a wooden door) to a local artist for just 175 dollars, not recognizing the work’s potential value. The painting was subsequently confiscated by the police and is being held while the ownership dispute is adjudicated. The incident may reveal both a positive and a negative aspect of the Banksy effect. The artist who purchased the work, Belal Khaled, has himself adopted a street art style in his altered photographs of rockets detonating in Gaza. When confronted about the purchase of the recent work, he claimed that his motivation was “to protect the Banksy mural from neglect and that he had always wanted to own something from the renowned street artist.”14 However, the incident also highlights the fact that, as prices for Banksy’s work have risen, people have used questionable means to acquire them. Long before street artists from all over the world flocked to the West Bank to leave their marks and signs of solidarity on the huge barrier walls, graffiti was already abundant in occupied Palestine and in the streets and alleys of the refugee camps in the neighboring countries of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The history of using their walls as an irreplaceable medium for all kinds of messages is as old as the Palestinian struggle itself.15

With this introduction, Pascal Zoghbi and Karl Stone set up one of the central issues concerning graffiti and street art in the Palestinian territories: who produces it and who views it. In claiming precedence and, in some respects, priority for a tradition of graffiti that extends back long before the barrier walls provided an irresistible canvas for artists wanting to comment on the struggle, Zoghbi and Stone suggest that in Palestine graffiti served largely as a local means of expression, with roots in the communities in which it was created and with messages intended for the local population. This was, and is, certainly the case with the locations where various political factions (Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad) claimed territory through the display of spray-painted slogans and martyrs’ portraits. It was also the case in less politicized contexts as well, such as those in which Palestinian homeowners would commission or create murals to celebrate events like weddings or the return of pilgrims from the hajj. In both political and private instances, however, a defining feature of Palestinian graffiti is that it was created by local people, for a local audience. With the building of the separation barrier and, shortly after, the arrival of international street artists wanting to make their mark on this politically charged and highly public space, that focus on the local artist and audience changed. That is not to say that local Palestinian

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artists did not (or do not) create work on the separation barrier. However, it is the presence of work by international street artists that has caused the most concern among the local community. Freelance journalist William Parry holds a different view than Zoghbi and Stone regarding the response of Palestinians to the presence of international street artists, or, in some cases, simply international tourists, painting on the separation barrier. Parry is specifically concerned with the economic and social effects of the wall, as it makes accessing basic services and, sometimes, even their own land extremely difficult and demoralizing for Palestinian families. Parry asks the somewhat rhetorical question “So is the graffiti effective?” and acknowledges the oft-repeated story of an old Palestinian man famously telling Banksy to go home, that “Palestinians don’t want the wall to be made beautiful.”16 As he acknowledges, for at least some local residents, “the medium is the message: a plain, oppressive concrete Wall eight metres high that imprisons a city while stealing their land mutely communicates all that needs to be said.”17 In its focus on the muteness and blank space of the surface of the barrier, the difference of opinion as to whether the street art that has been added to the wall emphasizes or detracts from its impact as a visual symbol of oppression bears some similarity to controversies over the appropriate design of memorials, particularly in the United States. Among the most famous of these was the controversy surrounding the design of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. The memorial, which was opened in 1982, is famous for its minimalist design, featuring only the names of those killed, engraved on a reflective black granite surface. Opponents of the design believed that its simplicity and particularly its black color and below-grade placement were disrespectful to those who died in the Vietnam War and succeeded in their campaign to have another, figurative, memorial added to the site. The conflict between minimalism and figuration in memorial design has since been reflected in other locations, notably the National 9/11 Memorial at the site of the World Trade Center in New York, and the central debate over appropriate styles of reflection and commemoration resonates with the debates over the value of imagery and text on the separation barrier. However, Parry also counters those critics who focus solely on the negative response to street art on the barrier by citing an economic argument: “Most [Palestinians] appreciate the international show of solidarity the artwork and graffiti represent, and the foreign interest it generates. If it attracts people who part with some tourist dollars on souvenirs and in Bethlehem’s hotels and restaurants—and who also witness the reality— then it’s worth it.”18 The most frequent point of entry from Israel to Palestine

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is likely the Qalandiya checkpoint, which marks the closest crossing between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Unless one arrives with a tour group, thus bypassing some of the standard border-control process, traveling from Jerusalem’s Old City to Bethlehem involves boarding a bus that drops you at the checkpoint with other tourists and Palestinians making the border crossing. The process, especially when crossing back to the Israeli side of the border, is both opaque and somewhat menacing, and Parry’s description of crossing the border as “difficult, time-consuming and humiliating” rings true, even for a tourist with an American passport. In their book Concrete Messages, Zia Krohn and Joyce Lagerweij set out less to advance their own interpretation of the street art on the separation barrier and more to allow some of the artists who have done work on the barrier to speak for themselves, to share their reasons for creating work in this politically and emotionally charged venue and to discuss their choice of subject for the works created.19 Krohn and Lagerweij note that following the initial construction of the barrier in 2002, it was not until Banksy arrived in 2005 to create work that the site began to draw the attention of international and even local street artists. Since 2005, the amount of street art on the barrier has increased dramatically, although, as the authors also point out, not all of the paintings have remained as the artists first created them, or, perhaps, remained at all. As Krohn and Lagerweij explain, “In some cases the work is not intact anymore because of weather conditions or because someone didn’t agree with it and decided to paint over it or add something. Even when it was not intended, a lot of the art on the separation barrier ended up being a collaboration of some kind.”20 The issue of unintended collaborations as a factor in the ongoing life of a work of street art raises interesting issues in terms of both aesthetics and reception. When street art had its origins in New York in the 1970s, it was considered a mark of ultimate disrespect to paint over or alter someone’s tag or piece—in fact, such an act could lead to long-term feuds and even physical violence. In the case of a location such as the separation barrier, where the intervention might occur some substantial time after the original creation of the work and where it is likely that the first artist has long since moved on from the area, the effects are somewhat different. The painting and repainting of the separation barrier has, in many areas, created an intriguing palimpsest of images, offering a layered and multidimensional perspective on the work. Know Hope, whose real name is Adam Yekutieli, lives and works in Tel Aviv, placing him in the interesting position of being an Israel-based artist whose work appears on the Palestinian side of the barrier. Yet, Know Hope is also an

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international figure, whose projects have appeared in locations as diverse as London, New York, Paris, and Beijing among many other locations. He works primarily in wheatpaste, although he also creates three-dimensional works, one of which was included in front of the separation barrier. Since 2014, Know Hope has been engaged in a more participatory, almost performative project that involves interviewing, documenting, and even tattooing participants.21 His work on the separation barrier included a series of wheatpaste posters as well as cutouts of figures, matched with brief texts. Know Hope’s visual style is that of simple, often angular, black-and-white line drawings. Often these incorporate strong patterns, for example, in a figure’s clothing, which help to draw and focus the viewer’s attention on the simple forms. He also makes use of cutouts in some of the posters—as, for example, a figure making a heart shape with his/her hands which has the space within the hands cut out, thereby revealing the scarred surface of the barrier itself. The cutout serves to draw our attention more fully to the actual location of the image and serves as a reminder of the emotional toll the barrier takes on those who live in its confines. Many of Know Hope’s figurative images, such as this one, are presented with a thick, black border around the edge of the poster. This serves, at once, to both highlight and frame the image and creates the impression of a portrait; however, the figure’s closed eyes, simplistically rendered face, and indeterminate gender contradict any idea that the work represents a specific individual. Most of Know Hope’s works on the wall do not appear to carry an overt political message and even the slogan he contributed, “This is our messy anthem,” can be read in multiple, not necessarily political, ways. The artist himself confirms this position, stating, “In general I try to stay away from direct political messages. Political slogans often point fingers, which automatically kills a dialogue. . . . I try to portray not the political issues themselves directly, but more the minor human conditions of which they are composed, because those issues are made up of a collection of minor moments, minor situations and then it becomes more general.”22 It is this combination of accessibility of style and accessibility of message that gives Know Hope’s work its visual and symbolic power. Swoon, born Caledonia Curry, is one of the few prominent women working in the largely male-dominated arena of street art.23 She is also clearly part of an emerging group of artists (of which Know Hope could also be considered a part) whose work on the street is part of a much more diverse artistic practice combining installation, performance, participatory projects, and gallery-based work. Like Know Hope, Swoon also works primarily with wheatpaste, a necessary strategy given the detail and complexity of many of her works. Swoon’s work

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on the separation barrier, like several other of her pieces, features patterning and includes women as key figures and protagonists. It is necessary to resist the temptation to equate these visual elements with her role as a woman artist, while at the same time acknowledging that they give her work a distinct visual identity that stands apart from much of the other street art seen on the separation barrier and in other projects in which she has participated. Perhaps, more than other artists working on the barrier, Swoon was particularly attentive to the scale and location of her pieces. In relation to scale, she states, “One of the very simple things that seemed important was to give the work a sense of scale in photographs. . . . I think it’s important that people understand the scale of it because it helps in understanding the grotesque power imbalance that the Palestinian people are facing.”24 To that end, she created works that are vertically oriented, often in a pyramid composition, and placed high on the wall, drawing the viewer’s gaze upward and emphasizing the extreme height of the barrier. Swoon also thought carefully about the location of her works on the barrier, placing one, for example, at the location where a Palestinian youth scaled the barrier to place a Palestinian flag on the top and was subsequently imprisoned for eight years as punishment for his actions. Like Know Hope, Swoon also makes use of negative space in her work, notably in a piece based on a female character from The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano. A detailed black-and-white image of a woman shown from the waist up then assumes a more abstract form as white cutouts representative of her skirt (which she is both wearing and sewing) extend in a billowing triangle down the wall. Some of these cutouts form fragments of Islamic-influenced patterns; the skirt is also adorned with fragments of fabric representing pockets, an element that features in the story on which the image is based. This work as well as others on the wall incorporates text—quotes by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Arundhati Roy, and others who have spoken out against injustice in various contexts.25 While Swoon’s works generally have a complex set of influences, the images can also be read effectively by those who may not be familiar with her sources. The woman sewing her skirt, for example, can be seen, perhaps, as stitching together elements of a fragmented society and thus be successfully interpreted even by those who do not know Galeano’s story. While Swoon’s piece on the separation barrier maintains an enigmatic quality, open to multiple interpretations, her work in cities such as New York and London appears to respond more directly to those locations; in the words of one commentator, “When you pass a figure by an artist like Swoon, the effect has the familiarity of an old neighbor you have not seen in a long while . . . people are the flowers that must spring through the cracks in the dehumanized

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sidewalk.”26 Following that metaphor, one might interpret Swoon’s work on the separation barrier as also conveying a spirit of camaraderie, of recuperating a personal humanity in the face of dehumanizing circumstances. Know Hope, Swoon, and other artists have created work on the wall that both acknowledges the stark and distressing realities of the conflict between Israel and Palestine and offers at least some inkling of hope and positivity. Some artists, however, have chosen a route that either focuses on the purely negative aspects on the situation or calls into question the very act of expressing oneself on the barrier. Joy van Erven, Filippo Minelli, and Agurk would fall into this latter category. Van Erven and Minelli both contributed simple, painted text to the barrier: one of van Erven’s phrases was “been there done that” and Minelli wrote “Ctrl + Alt + Delete.” Agurk, on the other hand, produced a stylized “piece” which added his signature to the wall. Van Erven, a Dutch artist who also has lived in Israel, describes his statement as a specific reaction to Banksy’s work on the barrier, saying, “He [Banksy] was the first foreign artist to claim this as a huge canvas. After his first works there, many artists have followed, and this was my contribution and reaction to that. As an artist I had been there and done that.”27 With this statement, van Erven situates himself in relation to not only the famous English artist but also the myriad other international artists who have chosen to work in Palestine. “Been there done that” is also reflective of the touristic context for the separation barrier; there exists a symbiotic relationship between the art on the wall and the tourists who visit to see it. The art, particularly Banksy’s, originally drew the tourists; now the tourists, in part, prompt more artists to come to gain the exposure that working on the barrier can provide. Not only has the artist been there and done that, but so have the viewers of the work, and the tone and inelegant visual expression of the phrase suggest a level of jaded boredom that calls into question the validity of both artistic interventions on the wall and visits to view them. If the creation of art on the barrier and the traipsing of tourists past the work become routine, what impact does it have? It is the jarring nature of the barrier itself, the street art interventions on it, and the difficult viewing conditions for the work that combine to give the art its power. “Been there done that” functions best if viewed as an ironic statement intended to break the viewer’s complacency, calling into question any level of comfort or familiarity with the separation wall and what it signifies. The Italian street artist Filippo Minelli painted the Microsoft command “Ctrl + Alt + Delete” in light blue, block capitals, seemingly hastily executed as evidenced by the trails of paint dripping from each letter. The command,

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of course, is the last resort for users whose computer has crashed and serves to allow the forced closing of any program or programs that have stopped functioning properly. As an analogy, one might see the command in the context of the separation barrier as referring to a need to reset the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis, in the same way that this combination of keys allows a user to reset a malfunctioning computer. Indeed, this interpretation appears to be supported by the artist who explains, “I wrote that informatic command to underline that something isn’t working in the operative system ‘Israel/Palestine’ and that the only thing to do is to stop everything, watch and decide what project is worth continuing, and which one is totally trapped in the mud.”28 While clearly an important and valid interpretive option, the presence of the phrase in conjunction with the proliferation of artwork and slogans on the separation barrier might also lead a viewer to think about the need to reset the visual expression on the wall. As work is painted or pasted and repainted and repasted, is it perhaps time to create a clean slate on which a new set of artists can make their literal and figurative mark? Or possibly to leave the wall empty—the blank, ugly barrier that some local residents say they would prefer over attempts to beautify it and, in so doing, to perhaps give credence to its existence? As such, Ctrl + Alt + Delete may be read as both a call to action and a reproach and can be seen as relevant in various contexts, bearing diverse meanings. An earlier project by Minelli, in which the artist painted texts such as “Flickr,” “Facebook,” and “MySpace” on the sides of slum buildings in locations such as Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Bamako, Mali, also reflects his interest in the juxtaposition of place and text. As Minelli states, “Writing the text of anything connected with the 2.0 life we are living in the slums of the third world is to point out the gap between the reality we still live in and the ephemeral world of technologies.”29 While the separation barrier is not quite equivalent to Asian or African slums, the concern with the disjuncture between lived reality for some and the increasingly virtual world inhabited by others is a theme germane to both locations. The contribution of Danish artist Agurk and some of his friends to the wall appears both visually jarring and self-serving, though this latter point is challenged by Agurk’s own comments on the rationale behind the work. Agurk and his colleagues have simply produced their tags, or signatures, using the traditional graffiti style of puffy letters, surrounded by a black drop shadow and outlined in bright colors. The names are large and make a highly visible statement even at some distance from the wall. The idea of international artists choosing

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to simply tag such a politically charged space appears, at first, disrespectful and even arrogant, however Agurk explains their choice in more thoughtful terms: At first I wanted to say something related to the wall, the situation and the circumstances around it, like many others have done. We tried to come up with something that was not too aggressive and not too much of a repetition of what is there already, but the time was too short and we couldn’t come up with anything really intelligent. So we chose to do some pieces instead, which I actually think makes sense enough.30

In other words, what may appear initially as a solipsistic gesture should perhaps instead be read as an acknowledgment of the futility of speaking truth to power or to provide an original opinion in such a contested and already-claimed space. Like van Erven, Agurk and his friends have “been there done that” but have chosen to claim a sense of agency, marking their contribution to the ongoing dialogue both on and around the wall. Agurk also comments on the phenomenon of rewriting and defacing the work that has been done on the separation barrier when he recounts that some Palestinian kids “capped” (went over) the pieces painted by the artist and his friends. The Danish artists chased the kids away and redid the works, but, again, Agurk acknowledges the complexity of the situation in which they were working: “Maybe I shouldn’t have fixed it, because I now think it was funny that they did it, and that their capping contained some energy that also has its right to be there and tells something as well.”31 Perhaps, more than any other area in the Middle East, the separation barrier represents a location in which the simultaneous presence of international artists, local artists, and local citizens who are not interested in the art on the barrier raises inescapable conflicts of motive, expression, and interpretation. Although much of the art on the separation barrier does not refer to specific individuals, but rather presents more universal images and sayings, there are some examples that point to significant political figures and to Palestinians active in the struggle for recognition. One such work depicts Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who, in 1969, earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first woman to hijack an airliner. Khaled’s image was made famous through a photo taken just after the hijacking by the famous Vietnam War photographer Eddie Adams. Adams photographed a broadly smiling Khaled, wearing the Palestinian khaffiyeh and holding an AK-47 rifle. It is this image that is portrayed on the separation barrier, along with the phrase, “Don’t forget the struggle.” Khaled has been featured on lecture

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Figure 11 Portrait of Leila Khaled on Israel/Palestine separation barrier. Photo credit: Author.

tours and in a documentary film in recent years and the artist’s selection of her image to represent the Palestinian struggle may be reflective of that renewed interest in her story. It is interesting, however, that of the two well-known photos taken of Khaled after the hijacking, the artist here chose the one in which she is smiling, rather than the one in which she has a more introspective expression. In this way, Khaled’s portrait presents an unambiguous gesture of support for armed resistance, a lack of ambiguity not entirely in keeping with the mood of much of the art on the separation barrier, but perhaps more accurately linked to the ubiquitous martyr posters found throughout Palestinian cities and towns. In the words of Mahmoud Abu Hashash, who has studied the visual representation of martyrdom in Palestine, “The martyr’s poster is a work of art inextricably connected to the rituals of martyrdom. Its exhibition is both an indispensable part of that ritual and its end: an expression of Palestine itself.”32 While martyr posters and painted images of martyrs may not be the most predominant form of visual expression on the separation barrier, their presence can serve to connect various forms of representation of Palestinian resistance and to link the very public and internationally recognizable space of the barrier to the more hidden, even private, spaces of the streets, shops, and homes of Palestinian communities.

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Many, if not all, of the international street artists who have come to create work on the separation barrier appear to feel a genuine sense of solidarity with the Palestinian people and of outrage at their treatment by the Israeli government. Nonetheless, their participation in a project that is intended to express outrage at the situation in hope of drawing international action is made problematic in some respects by the ways in which they benefit from commercially driven projects supported by businesses and organizations in the United States and other countries. Ron English, for example, is a well-known American street artist who contributed three works to the 2007 Santa’s Ghetto project. One of these works was based on Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937), a painting that harshly criticized the actions of Spain’s fascist government during the Spanish Civil War. English’s piece showed Palestinian children fleeing bombs dropped by an American pilot, a theme the artist described as reflective of the link between the American support of Israel and the oppression of the Palestinian people. In English’s words, “Since Israel is our welfare state, we have a certain responsibility for the Palestinian people that we don’t seem to want to acknowledge.”33 English goes on to question his complicity in the American and global power structures, saying: American support of Israel remains unquestioned in the United States. As an American taxpayer, I help fund what has become in many instances, oppression for the Palestinians and their children. The uncertainty of their lives concerns me as an American and world citizen.”34

Yet, such concern does not stop English from selling his work through American galleries (for example, Corey Helford in Los Angeles) or participating in highprofile commercial projects such as Wynwood Walls in Miami. In a particularly disturbing twist, he has even reused Guernica as the basis for a mural in Dubai’s upscale retail and dining complex, City Walk. To see the image morphed into a collage of characters from kid’s cereals and Disney makes a mockery of its earlier appropriation by English as a symbol of Palestinian oppression at the hands of American international policy. The United Arab Emirates, an ally of the United States, occupies the ironic position of abhorring Israeli policy toward Palestine while offering little in the way of practical support to the Occupied Territories, further complicating English’s position. Although English’s work is a particularly strong example of the contradictory dynamics at work in the participation of international street artists in making work on the separation barrier, it is far from the only one. The Wynwood Walls project, for instance, includes work by at least two artists, Swoon and Faile, whose work has also appeared on the separation barrier.

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Street art in Jerusalem Although the focus of this chapter has been on street art on the Israel/Palestine separation barrier, the street art found in the Old City of Jerusalem, specifically in the Muslim quarter, merits at least a brief consideration. Jerusalem’s Old City, with its intensely regulated boundaries (both internal and external), strong security presence, and overwhelming number of sacred sites is not the first place one would expect to see street art. Indeed, of the four quarters of the city— Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian—only the Muslim quarter appeared to have any street art at all. However, when viewed in conjunction with the street art on the separation barrier, the images that are present in that quarter are particularly interesting. The Muslim quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City is a chaotic, bustling warren of small streets, most of which function as souks. At first, it is difficult to notice anything amid the press of tourists and locals, but as the visitor adjusts to the environment, images begin to appear. These small stencils reveal a specific set of motifs, featuring the specific religious sites of the Dome of the Rock and the Ka’baa as well as more generically Arab themes such as palm trees and crescent moons. Many of the stencils are produced in the black, red, and green of the Palestinian flag, though blue and yellow are also prominent. Sometimes the images appear in single, isolated instances; at other times, they create a wallpaperlike effect, covering the walls of houses and shops. Unlike the street art on the separation barrier, these stencils are not generally overlaid on one another but their close placement and haphazard arrangement can be similarly disorienting. Unlike the works on the barrier, however, these images do not seem to compete with one another; once the viewer adjusts to the composition, there is a rhythm and harmony that emerges from the confusion. As stencils, the images share the same qualities of easy and rapid execution discussed previously in relation to stencils created in Cairo or Beirut. However, the stencils in the Muslim quarter have a very different effect on the viewer, in part due to their placement on the buildings of the quarter and in part due to the architecture and urban fabric of the quarter itself. When a visitor starts to notice the presence of these blue, yellow, red, green, and black icons they begin to appear everywhere, seeming to emerge out of the shadowy alleys and the rough facades of houses and shops. The repetition of the same forms and symbols gives a coherence to the stencils which helps to stabilize the otherwise chaotic space of the quarter. Like the patterned tiles on the Dome of the Rock which stands just meters away from the edge of the quarter, the stencils both anchor and enliven the architecture on

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Figure 12 Stencils on a wall in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, Israel. Photo credit: Author.

which they are placed. They function also as a kind of shorthand, something we have seen with the revolutionary stencil, such as the blue bra, in Cairo. Once you become familiar with their symbology, they are immediately legible as a metonymic code that causes the viewer to associate a particular image, for example, the Ka’baa, with a state of being or feeling. At times, that association might be multivalent; to continue with the example of the Ka’baa, it can evoke a religious fervor, a sense of righteous anger or a feeling of solidarity with fellow Muslims. The Dome of the Rock connotes both pride and loss, felt keenly in this city which has been passed between religions throughout its history and in which Muslims today retain a presence but are also perpetually reminded of absence: of their homeland of Palestine, of relatives and friends unable to pass into Israel, of opportunities for employment and of free access to some of their most significant religious sites. These stencils in Jerusalem, while a more permanent fixture of the landscape than those painted in Cairo in 2011, are no less angry or revolutionary.

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The difficulties of movement for Palestinians are also felt by Arabs living within the borders of Israel, and the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City presents a unique setting in which to consider those difficulties. Its residents and visitors are at once a mere stone’s throw from some of the holiest sites in Islam, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, and yet those sites have at many times become as inaccessible as the farthest reaches of the globe. For a Muslim living in Palestine or Jerusalem, visiting Mecca might be easier than visiting the Temple Mount. So, when a stencil in the Old City shows the Dome of the Rock, it reflects an irony of both proximity and incomparable distance. When paired with an image of the Ka’baa, the literal and metaphorical distances of Muslim holy sites are brought forward. While so many religious pilgrims come to Jerusalem, many of its residents are themselves denied access to places of pilgrimage. Thus, while simple in style, the stencils found in the Old City present a complex set of meanings. When set in the context of other visual symbols of Arab identity and presented as a decorative façade for buildings within the Muslim quarter, these stencils provide a powerful marker of faith, culture, and identity in the face of competing power structures.

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Iran: Martyrs, Memorials, and Public Space

Since the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, continuing through the IranIraq War of 1980–88 and through today, in Iran, particularly Tehran, murals have emerged as a highly visible means of rhetorical communication. Through these and other visual media such as posters, banners, and graffiti, various official and semiofficial groups “have exploited the rhetorical potential of representational art in a concerted bid to advertise, disseminate, and solidify the basic tenets of the Islamic republic.”1 Christiane Gruber has identified three categories of murals, affiliated with three key periods in recent Iranian history, and this chapter uses those broad constructs to shape its arguments.2 First are the murals created during the time of the 1979 revolution, and refreshed regularly in the years since, which generally express anti-American sentiments. Second are those murals that focus on martyrdom, for example, praising those who died in the fighting during the Iran-Iraq War. These murals celebrate not only the martyrs of that specific war but also those who are seen to have been killed for their faith on other occasions, even those who did not willingly sacrifice their lives, such as the passengers on Iran Air flight 655 which was shot down by the United States in 1988. Finally, since the mid-1990s, murals in Tehran have focused largely on beautification rather than on advancing any particular ideology or message.3 Government-sponsored projects have encouraged the production of large-scale murals in a variety of locations, but particularly residential areas— an unsurprising strategy given the overdevelopment and crowding in Tehran and the generally drab quality of its residential architecture. An examination of these three types of murals provides insight into the literal and figurative place of street art in post-revolutionary Iran. The chapter concludes with a section on an emerging genre of Iranian street art that does not fit the above categories, but rather asserts a subversive and antiauthoritarian message more in keeping with the street art discussed in the previous chapters on Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine. While still a very underground and emerging element of street art

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in Iran, the very existence of this new genre comes as something of a shock in one of the most patrolled and regulated countries in the world and merits consideration in its own right. Before beginning this chapter, it is important to note that the examples of street art discussed are only from Tehran and that many Iranians see the city as a place apart and not necessarily reflective of the country as a whole. In the words of photographer Sina Araghi: Tehran is a different story. The environment really does shake the senses. The large crowds, the lack of order and respect for one another, the mind numbing traffic and almost lawless sense of driving are elements that are difficult to prepare for when visiting. And yes, the people are, as a whole, angry. They are under tremendous stress everywhere they go. They have no faith in the government and have no reservations about expressing their frustrations. And the youth try to make the best of what they have: a shortage of jobs, limited freedoms, closed off from the world, under constant pressure from authority.4

While the sheer prevalence and variety of street art in Tehran make it an important and appropriate focus for an analysis of visual styles and subjects, it is also critical to remember that Tehran is only one region in an extremely large and heterogeneous country and to avoid the Western tendency to homogenize the Middle East in ways that negate the rich and diverse cultural, religious, and political characteristics of the region.

Anti-American murals For most observers in the West, the Iranian Revolution in 1979, particularly the siege of the US Embassy and the lengthy imprisonment of fifty-two hostages, was the event that thrust the country into public consciousness and shaped perception of the Islamic Republic in ways that continue to the present day. Following forty-six years of rule by the Pahlavi dynasty, embodied in the figures of Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, generally referred to in the West simply as the Shah, and his cosmopolitan wife Farah, in 1979, Iran was returned to a theocracy through the return from exile of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the overthrow in January of the Shah’s secular government, followed by the rapid departure of the Shah himself and his family. The United States had for years supported the modernizing and secular policies of the Shah and the sudden emergence of a religiously dominated leadership under Khomeini threw

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relations with the Islamic Republic into chaos, a dysfunctional state of affairs that continues to this day. Writing about the scene outside the embassy in the days and weeks after start of the hostage crisis, veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk describes the scene: The crowds were strategically placed to catch the television cameras, and journalists were allowed—indeed encouraged—to approach the embassy and stare through the black wrought-iron gates. The hostages locked in the main embassy building—the men with their hands tied—could not be seen, although students had spray-painted slogans on the roof of the reception block. Just inside the forecourt, they now erected a painting 5 metres high, a symbolic work inspired by Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of US marines raising the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima in 1945; in this case, however, Muslim revolutionaries had replaced the marines and they were struggling to raise a green Islamic flag, one end of which had miraculously turned into a hand strangling the Stars and Stripes. The occupation had thus become theatre, complete with painted scenery.5

The symbolism described by Fisk is extraordinary, not only in its own visual and visceral power but also in the ways in which it prefigures later Iranian revolutionary and post-revolutionary murals. An iconic image of Western conquest and liberation is both appropriated and subverted to support the dominant language of the Islamic Revolution: the West as the “Great Satan” that needs to be destroyed at all costs. The same can be seen in the murals that soon decorated the outer embassy walls and which remain to this day, in which symbols such as the Statue of Liberty and the US flag are transformed into emblems of death and destruction; in the case of Liberty, a death’s head and in the case of the flag, a gun. It is also important to note that this imagery, aptly described by Fisk as the painted scenery that formed the backdrop to a staged occupation, was explicitly aimed not only at the Iranian people and revolutionary sympathizers but also at the Western journalists, and by extension the Western public, who were riveted by the events unfolding at the embassy. Rosenthal’s original photograph was disseminated in the Western media as a quintessential symbol of the US Army’s triumph over the evil “other”; Western media images of the Iranian propaganda that took over the streets in the wake of the revolution and the embassy occupation served as a frightening reminder that the “other” was all too capable of rising up against the West again. We see in the shifting fortunes of the Iran nuclear deal a similar wariness about the interference of Western governments in Iranian affairs. The 2015 framework,

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Figure 13 Mural on the wall of the former American Embassy, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: Author.

largely brokered by US president Barack Obama and supported by the member states of the UN Security Council, substantially limited Iran’s nuclear program. The acceptance of the deal by the Iranian government in return for a significant easing of sanctions against the country was seen by many, both in Iran and in the West, as a sign of growing détente between the Islamic Republic and, specifically, the United States. However, US president Donald Trump’s 2018 declaration that he would withdraw from the deal was read by some in Iran and globally as a sign of the inconsistent nature of America’s stance toward the country and opened the possibility that, instead of supporting a mutually beneficial and negotiated agreement, America might again insert itself into Iranian affairs of state in less diplomatic ways. Immediately following the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, the walls surrounding the buildings became an impromptu gallery for banners and signs proclaiming the revolutionary and anti-American messages of the hostage takers and their supporters. In the weeks that followed the seizure, these hastily drawn and painted banners gave way to more permanent murals, some by established Iranian artists, that can still today be seen along the outside of the embassy complex. These murals, along with a few others that remain visible in Tehran, have become the iconic symbols of the revolutionary period and the intense anti-American sentiment of the time. The use of murals

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as a reminder of past, current, or potential occupation by an undesired foreign entity (or local entity supported by a foreign power) has analogies both within the Middle East and beyond. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, for example, murals painted in Catholic neighborhoods betray anti-Protestant and, by extension, anti-British sentiments. In Iraq, street art was used to deliver messages to the US military to “go home” and also caricatured the then president George W. Bush. In Egypt and Bahrain, street art demanded the removal of secular governments and entrenched monarchies. Thus, the murals on the walls of the US Embassy and anti-American murals elsewhere in the city serve both to galvanize support for the revolutionary cause and to serve as a cautionary tale for the Iranian people: if not watchful, not only the United States itself but US-backed local rulers, such as Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, could return. Two of the most familiar of the embassy murals are the image of the Statue of Liberty connected by barbed war to the outline of Iran and that of a gun, painted in the Stars and Stripes, against a background of typical Islamic tile patterns. Although clear and direct in their messages, and therefore extremely effective as the works of political propaganda, neither mural is visually sophisticated or well executed. Given that they are repainted regularly to serve as a backdrop for protests, it is possible that some of their original features have been lost over the years. However, given their visual and historic resonance, it is unlikely that they have been substantially altered. The lack of painterly sophistication, then, makes it all the more surprising to learn that they are attributed to the accomplished artist Hannibal Alkhas, or possibly to his students from Tehran University, where he was on the arts faculty. Of course, if the murals are, in fact, student works that could explain their somewhat crude style, which is in no way typical of Alkhas’s sophisticated and painterly works. Yet, even if the murals are not the work of Alkhas himself, his role in their production sheds light on the complexity of Iranian society and politics at the moment of the 1979 revolution. Hannibal Alkhas died in 2010 and in the several tributes to him published online at the time there are no references to his political work or involvement with the production of public art in support of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.6 This is, perhaps, unsurprising when Alkhas’s biography is explained. The artist was a Christian Iranian of Assyrian descent who came from a literary family which has produced many important poets.7 Born in 1930, he left Iran in 1951 and, after studying for three years at Loyola University in Chicago, he earned his Bachelors of Fine Art and Masters of Fine Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Between 1959 and 1969, he went back to Iran, returned

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for a time to the United States, and then settled in Tehran, where he taught at Tehran University until 1980. He returned again to the United States and taught at various colleges and universities until making a final homecoming to Iran in 1992, although he ultimately moved again to the United States where he died at the age of eighty. A cosmopolitan, Christian artist with an MFA from one of the most prestigious art schools in the United States, he was hardly the figure one would expect to lead students in the production of revolutionary propaganda. The two embassy murals with which Alkhas was associated, although simple in their composition, are nonetheless compelling as images of political protest. In the first, the iconic symbol of the United States, the Statue of Liberty, is rendered with her face in the rigid mask of a skeleton, eyes hollowed, and teeth bared. Her right arm is raised but cut off before we can see the torch, the hopeful symbol of freedom. Likewise, her left arm is cropped such that the image does not include the tablet of law held by the statue. Instead, the image presents Liberty as a truncated figure whose gesture reads as much of protest as of freedom. From the figure’s left side, red stripes, clearly evocative of the US flag, stretch several feet across the mural until they reach the outline of a map of Iraq, at which point the stripes become rows of barbed wire. The supposed freedom embodied by the United States and given visual form in the Statue of Liberty has not liberated Iran, but rather held the country captive to Western politics and cultural values. Iran is shown in white, bordered by two bodies of water: the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea. The choice to clearly indicate Iran’s sea borders rather than its land ones may be intended to draw attention to the country’s critical role in the flow of oil to the West. The second mural with which Alkhas is associated contains fewer symbols, but alludes to similar themes. The quality of the design and execution of this mural appears more sophisticated than that of the Statue of Liberty, although, with repainting, it is difficult to gauge the quality of the original work. Again, the Stars and Stripes figure as a leading motif—this time covering the image of a pistol, a quintessentially American weapon reminiscent of gunfights in old Western movies. The gun appears to hover over a more delicately rendered and complex background, comprised of repeating patterns the likes of which are found frequently in Islamic art, particularly in the blue tiles that are ubiquitous in Iranian architecture. The gun looks almost silkscreened; its simple pattern and limited color range add to the effect. The painting of the background is looser, with visible brushstrokes, perhaps alluding to a craftsmanship that is associated with traditional Iranian or Islamic arts. One “tile” is outlined in red, a possible

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allusion to the blood of the martyrs of the revolution or perhaps to indicate that the gun has found a target in Iran. The imagery of these two murals appears, on an initial reading, straightforward, even to be expected given that these, in the pre-internet era, were the most enduring visual symbols of the United States in wide circulation at the time. However, it is important to return to the fact of Alkhas’s involvement with their creation to further interrogate the specific choices made in their composition. Alkhas was steeped in the US art world during both the late 1950s and again for much of the 1960s. He had to be keenly aware of the work of artists such as Jasper Johns, with his Flag paintings, and the emerging pop art movement. Is it a coincidence that the murals rely for their impact on the use of flattened, iconic images reminiscent of both some of Johns’s work and of pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol? Are the symbols chosen not only representative of America but, in their specific mode of presentation, representative of the same American culture of mass production and consumerism that the pop art movement and other artists of the period sought to critique? It is generally accepted that these and other propagandistic murals around Tehran were not solely intended for an Iranian audience, but were also meant to send a message to America and the international audience. Who better to skillfully encode that message than an artist who knew both the cultures and their visual iconography? Given the relative lack of information regarding the full scope of Alkhas’s involvement with the murals and other revolutionary art production, this suggestion must remain at the level of conjecture. However, the simple fact that an artist with as complex and multicultural a history as Alkhas was engaged in the production of the visual culture of the Islamic Revolution suggests that there is more to the images than first meets the eye.8 The multilayered context for the creation of the revolutionary murals produced after the establishment of the Islamic Republic in February 1979 and its subsequent ratification by popular referendum in April 1979 can be understood in part by recognizing that a tradition of public mural art extended back to the Pahlavi era and that street art and particularly revolutionary posters were an important component of the anti-Shah movement that originated prior to the events of 1979. Mohammad Reza Shah commissioned artists to produce murals and other works of public art that glorified the modernist agenda of his White Revolution which sometimes depicted the Shah himself as a benevolent and omnipresent figure guiding the country into an enlightened future. The works of public art were created not only on the streets but also in important

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civic buildings, often those designed by the modernist architects favored by the Pahlavis. At the same time that this government-sponsored art program was advancing, however, those Iranians who were starting to come together in their criticism of the Shah’s policies and of the increasing divisions, particularly among socioeconomic lines, were beginning to use art to promote a revolutionary agenda.9 At first, the revolutionaries largely made use of political posters as a means of expression, as gaining access to the streets to produce murals or other forms of street art was extremely difficult. Over time, however, artists did begin to use spray-painted stencils as a means of quickly targeting public walls with messages such as “Death to America” or “Death to Israel.” The artists engaged in the development of visual propaganda for the revolution drew on wellknown traditions of socialist, political art such as those prominent in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and Mexico. The Mexican Muralism movement, discussed previously in relation to the street art of the Egyptian revolution, became particularly significant to the artist-revolutionaries and much of their work on posters, paintings on canvas and in murals on the streets of Tehran echoed not only the messages but the visual style of the work of artists such as Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siquieros, and José Clemente Orozco. During the revolutionary year of 1979, Iranian artists were able to take to the streets publicly to create largescale works that also called on a tradition of socialist realism to provide a visual counterpart to the language of revolution used by Imam Khomeini and other leaders. In Russia in the 1920s, socialist realism became the prescribed style of art and the only form of art recognized or sanctioned by the government. Works of socialist realism celebrated the history of Russia and painted a picture of the post-revolutionary life as one of freedom and plenty, despite the impoverished conditions experienced by many in the country. As such, socialist realism was an appropriate artistic counterpart to the Islamic Republic’s increasing control of all means of expression and aspects of private and public life in Iran. As Talinn Grigor explains, however, this moment of visual freedom of expression was short-lived and the Cultural Revolution initiated by Imam Khomeini in 1980 resulted in a purging of socialist iconography in favor of Islamic, specifically Shia, symbolism.10 The iconographically and stylistically incongruous murals on the walls of the former American Embassy, discussed above, fall into an in-between period where socialist themes were quite literally being whitewashed from the public sphere and replaced by murals featuring an appropriately Shia emphasis on martyrdom. According to Gregor, that the embassy murals have been maintained at all is an unusual example of the

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preservation of a style of street art that relied on the “elongated, horizontal format of revolutionary street art,” most of which was destroyed during the 1980s, even if its subject matter began to incorporate Shia symbols and themes.11 Possibly the embassy murals were seen as part of such a uniquely important event in the revolution that their preservation is seen as providing an historical link to that critical moment in the establishment of the Islamic Republic as a dominant power, capable of taking on even the “Great Satan” itself.

Martyr murals Iran is the largest Shia majority country in the Middle East—a fact which distances it both politically from its Sunni majority neighbors such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia and psychologically in its emphasis on martyrdom as a central religious, personal, and national ideal. The theological split within Islam into Sunni and Shia occurred in the latter half of the seventh century as the result of a dispute over the correct line of succession of the Prophet Mohammed who died in 632. Mohammed’s only biological heir was his daughter, Fatima, who, as a woman, could not succeed him. One group within the umma felt that her husband, Ali, who was a cousin of Mohammed and thus the Prophet’s closest male relative, should become the next caliph. However, a second group argued that the caliph should be chosen from among Mohammed’s closest advisors. This line of argument prevailed, resulting in the election of the first three caliphs. Ali did become the fourth caliph, but was murdered after only a brief time in power. Although Ali’s murder was the catalyst for a split within the community, in which his followers began to break away from the main body of Islam, it was the death of his son, Hussein, that firmly established the Sunni/Shia division that exists in Islam to this day. It was also the death of Hussein that established a cult of martyrdom within the Shiite community. In 680, Hussein, with an army of his followers, went to battle on the plains of Karbala, in what is now Iraq, to establish that only a member of the Prophet’s family should hold the title of caliph. His doomed campaign was marked from the beginning by a sense of martyrdom through Hussein’s proclamation that to die for one’s beliefs was preferable to living with an unjust status quo. His rival’s army overpowered Hussein and his followers: “That day they fought from morning until their final breath, and the Imam [Hussein] . . . and the companions were all martyred. . . . The Army of the enemy, after ending the war . . . decapitated

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the bodies of the martyrs, denuded them, and threw them to the ground without burial.”12 Thus, the battle of Karbala is, for Shiites, defined by total commitment on the part of the true believers along with reprehensible behavior on the part of their enemies. It is this battle which gave Shiism its passionate belief in the glory of fighting and dying for a cause and elevated martyrdom as a central tenet of the Shiite form of Islam. The valorization of martyrdom in the Shia community has not dimmed since the battle of Karbala and, in Iran, the presence of martyrs is everywhere. In Tehran, the huge Behest-e Zahra cemetery houses the graves of thousands of martyred Iranians who lost their lives in conflicts and tragedies ranging from the Islamic Revolution, to the Iran-Iraq War, to the 1987 clash between Shia pilgrims and Saudi Arabian security forces at Mecca. The graves themselves are shrines to the martyred dead and there are numerous buildings housing further tributes to the martyrs of specific incidents. Many of these tributes include personal artifacts; however, in some cases, large-scale paintings and banners serve to commemorate the dead. The cemetery is symbolically oriented around the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who, while not technically a martyr himself, certainly serves as a pivotal figure in the discourse and visual representation of martyrdom in Iran. Many of the martyr murals around the city of Tehran show the deceased with the Ayatollah in the background, sometimes leading the figure into Paradise, sometimes simply as a benevolent presence conferring an element of sanctity and importance on the martyr’s sacrifice. These martyr murals are arrayed throughout the city and are so prevalent that it is impossible to travel more than a few blocks without encountering one. Some are on a small scale, tributes to local martyrs from a particular neighborhood, while others are very large paintings placed in prominent locations and often celebrating figures of more national importance. A typical example shows a trio of young men, peaceful expressions on their faces, arranged against a backdrop of an abstracted pattern reminiscent of Islamic tiles. They each wear the clothing that would have marked their individual style in life and are thus not only visually linked through their expressions and the uniform scale of their portraits but also individually identified by their faces and through their dress. In addition to the patterns which situate the image within a specifically Islamic, even Iranian, context, there are multicolored birds which look like they could have been lifted from the pages of a Persian manuscript. The bird motif in martyr memorials typically symbolizes freedom and it is likely that the same symbolic function applies here; however, the colorful birds serve as a visual connection to more traditional art forms as well.

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Figure 14 Martyr mural, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: Author.

In both Sunni and Shia tradition, the tenth day of Muharram (the first month of the Islamic calendar), is the day of Ashura, or the Day of Remembrance. Although the holy day is marked in both branches of Islam, for the Shia it is specifically associated with the martyrdom of Hussein, which occurred on the tenth day of Muharram. Thus, for Shia Muslims, Ashura is more specifically a day of mourning and, of course, has strong associations with martyrdom and with the celebration and commemoration of the lives of all martyrs. An important visual component of the Ashura celebrations are the banners which are both displayed on houses and other buildings and carried through the streets in processions. The banners themselves often feature images of martyrs, including the martyred Hussein himself, as well as symbolic representations of martyrdom such as the tulip. Thus, on the day of Ashura, these banners themselves become a kind of street art; serving as additional public visualizations and commemorations of martyrdom as well as enlivening the static martyr murals already present throughout the city. Celebrations of Ashura take place in Shia communities throughout the Middle East; however, the celebrations in Iran are the most elaborate, followed, perhaps, by those in Bahrain. Ashura is one of the most visible demonstrations of Shia ideology, rooted in its commitment to the martyr Hussein. Though the feud between Shia and Sunni Islam runs throughout the

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countries of the Middle East, perhaps nowhere is the tension between the two sects more explicitly embodied than in the rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran. As such, Saudi Arabia places strong restrictions on the exercise of specifically Shia religious practices within the country, including a ban on the enactment of Ashura rituals. The deep divisions in religious ideology seem to be reflected in the street art of the two countries. While martyrs’ murals are arguably the most important style of street art in Iran, they appear to be completely absent from the limited examples of street art that exist in Saudi Arabia. The cult of martyrdom, although prevalent in other Sunni majority countries such as the UAE and Qatar, is not a feature of life in Saudi Arabia, or at least not a publicly acknowledged and celebrated element.13 In this respect, the absence of a visual tradition of martyr representation in Saudi street art or other imagery should not be surprising, while its emphasis and abundance in the contemporary visual tradition of Iran is both religiously and culturally apt.

Beautification murals As Christiane Gruber has discussed, mural production in Iran from the mid1990s to the present has been intended to show the country in a new light, an agenda she attributes, at least in part, to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997–2005), which ushered in a period of relative openness for Iran. As Gruber writes, “Iranian political rhetoric was even-tempered during these eight years, and this character certainly carried over into its mural arts program—itself intended to create a revised and more approachable public image for Tehran and to beautify the urban amalgamate of concrete structures that form the megalopolis.”14 The Tehran Beautification Organization is a nongovernmental organization, affiliated with the Tehran Municipality, which has, since 2004, overseen the commissioning and creation of the murals, along with other projects such as restoration of monuments, hosting art, and design exhibitions and other public events.15 Sometimes, the murals created as part of the scheme seem to mingle elements of the two genres of martyr murals and beautification murals. One example, by an unknown artist, shows a series of rows of figures, apparently praying, who face what appears to be the sea, merging with the blue sky. The mural is rendered in subtle shades of blue, green, and ocher and has a calm and serene quality, despite its location along a busy highway. The three rows of praying figures are

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Figure 15 Mural, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: Author.

arranged behind a larger white figure, also in a position of prayer, and a series of three arches, or gates, extend over them. These structures mimic the form of the mihrab, the architectural element that signals the direction of prayer in a mosque, a form that is also often incorporated in prayer rugs. They also call to mind the gates of heaven in Islamic tradition, although a literal connection to these gates is not possible given that the mural shows only three arches and there are eight gates leading to Jannah, or Paradise. The ambiguous relationship between the secular and the sacred that appears to mark this particular mural is an apt metaphor for contemporary Iran itself. Many of the beautification murals feature landscapes, open skies, gardens, trees, or some combination of these. Others showcase surreal illusions or cityscapes, or merge a fictive building with the existing architectural structure on which it is painted. The increasing presence of these surrealist and illusionistic works throughout Tehran may be attributable largely to the work of one artist, Mehdi Ghadyanloo, who has painted over 100 public murals in the city. Ghadyanloo’s paintings range from a futuristic cityscape filled with flying cars, to a boat floating on the side of a building, to a giraffe poking its head through several floors of an apartment block. His style has become so popular that it is imitated by other artists, and the Tehran Beautification Organization has

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even commissioned foreign artists, such as the American John Pugh, to create similarly illusionistic works. In interviews, Ghadyanloo is intentionally upbeat and describes his work as reflecting a vision of the city as he would like to see it, free from pollution and smog. As he says, “Sometimes you have only grey skies. I wanted to paint clear skies. I would like Tehran to be like my works.”16 Perhaps a subtle protest against the clogging of the city’s atmosphere with pollutants is as close to a political statement as an artist whose work is sponsored by the Beautification Organization in Tehran can get. However, when his work was shown in the Howard Griffin Gallery in London in the spring of 2015, the opportunity to create and exhibit work outside his home country allowed the expression of a darker mood that perhaps more accurately reflects the full experience of life in Iran. In addition to exhibiting small-scale works inside the gallery space, Ghadyanloo also created a public mural in Shoreditch, East London. The mural, described by Jonathan Jones as “subtle,” “eerily arresting and poetic,” depicts a child skipping rope, moving close to a whole in the ceiling.17 However, if the child were to escape through the hole, as the viewer might assume is the goal, two huge crows are waiting to capture him, suggesting that escape is merely an illusion. A metaphor for life in contemporary Tehran? Perhaps. Ghadyanloo acknowledges that his

Figure 16 Mural by Mehdi Ghadyanloo, Tehran, Iran. Photo credit: http://www.youngpersianartists.com.

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work in London is closer to a personal style in which he feels free to “do what I want.”18 What he wants to do, as shown in his canvases as well as in the London mural, is to use the traditional painting technique of trompe l’oeil, with a nod to surrealism, to create works that explore the darker side of his subconscious. This more nuanced and reflective approach from Ghadyanloo would likely be welcomed by Iranian artist Nazgol Ansarinia, a Tehran-based sculptor and installation artist who has criticized the beautification movement for attempting to gloss over the real problems that have come with increased urbanization and development in Iran. Since the 1979 revolution, there has been a mass migration to the cities, so much so that today over 70 percent of Iranian citizens live in an urban center. Ansarinia is an internationally recognized artist who was the recipient of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize in 2009, participated in the National Pavilion of Iran at the 2015 Venice Biennale and exhibited a video installation at the Tate Modern in 2018. She is outspoken about both her commitment to her native Iran and her concerns about its current direction. Her dissatisfaction with the garden and landscape murals of the beautification scheme lies in the way that their illusion of space and openness is “projecting a supposedly desired life onto the undesired,” that is to say, onto the drab landscape of Tehran.19

The rebels Very few street artists in Iran practice their art outside of the sanctioned programs of martyr murals and beautification murals approved by the government. Penalties for creating work that could be seen as political or anti-Islamic could be harsh and the social stigma of writing illegally on public walls is strong. As street artists ICY and SOT have said, “Artists are some of the people most affected by Iran’s censorship as their entire career is dependent on freedom of expression.”20 However, there are a few artists who have taken to the streets in ways that are more in keeping with Western street art style than with the codified and regulated mural production in Tehran. Best known among this small group is the artist A1one, who began painting in 2003, earning him a designation as Iran’s first street artist and the “Iranian Banksy.”21 A1one, whose moniker is a riff on “alone,” the situation he was in when first starting out as a street artist, works in a wide variety of styles, from a version of calligraffiti similar to that of eL Seed, to freestyle painting, to stencils. His work has become more politically inflected in the almost two decades that he has been painting. One stencil, for example, shows bombs with the heads and arms of babies falling through the air. In the context

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of Tehran, one is visually reminded of a famous anti-American mural showing bombs dropping along the stripes of the American flag. A1one’s increasingly political stance has led to run-ins with the police and his arrest in 2012. Recently, he has been working and living abroad sporadically; the atmosphere in Iran is clearly not hospitable to the work he wants to create, although, in some ways, the repressions of the Islamic Republic may be instrumental in allowing A1one to construct the persona he wishes to adopt. In the artist’s own words, “I am proud of being myself in a country that tries to promote a uniform voice and people are expected to toe the official line. . . . I am proud of quitting the mainstream, getting fired from the university, forging a new path for Iran and youth from neighboring countries—all this I am proud of.”22 ICY and SOT are brothers who grew up in Tabriz, where they first began stenciling. They subsequently placed their pieces in Tehran as well; in both cities, their work was marked by its visual affinity to that of European stencil artists Banksy and Blek Le Rat. In both cities, also, their pieces were never around for more than a day or two at most, as they were quickly whitewashed or buffed by the authorities. However, the brothers were careful to photographically document almost every work, creating an archive of their development as artists both technically and in terms of subject matter. Children have featured prominently in ICY and SOT’s work since their early days of stenciling (and some wheatpasting) in Tabriz. From a practical standpoint, the relatively small images of a crying boy, a girl on a swing, a boy squatting with his head on his hands, and others were quick to produce and suited to the out-of-the-way locations that the duo would choose for their interventions, recognizing that anything more public would bring them unwanted attention. Yet, beyond the pragmatic motivations for their creation, the pieces also worked visually and the artists became increasingly sophisticated in their choice of placement of the stencils. On the wall of the International Islamic Organization for Protection of Children’s Rights, a young, possibly African, girl stands balancing heavy boxes on her head, wearing a sad and resigned expression. As the artists later reflected, “We felt like people could relate to the subjects we address if we used children to talk about them. We addressed issues like child labor, censorship and the violence of war.”23 Through social media, the artists were able to present their work to the outside world and it gathered respect and a following that eventually led to a show in New York in 2012. The artists were granted US visas to attend the opening of the exhibit and never went back to Iran.24 Their practice has since expanded dramatically, both in terms of the scale of their works and their international reach. They have done both commissioned and surreptitious

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murals in their new base of Brooklyn as well as abroad in countries as diverse as France, Norway, China, Germany and, as will be discussed in a later chapter, the UAE. Children still feature prominently, though far from exclusively, in these larger murals and the artists are more openly addressing political issues, including gun violence, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the refugee crisis in Europe and environmental concerns. The link between the placement and the subject of their works is still of paramount concern to the artists. Outside a psychological clinic in Vitry-Sur-Seine, France, a Parisian suburb (banlieue) with a substantial migrant population and high unemployment, they affixed a stenciled work showing a group of African boys behind a chain-link fence, grasping at the wire. The artists inject a note of irony into the piece by filling the background with a beautiful blue sky, which is itself unimpeded by the fence; only the figures of the boys are covered by wire. In Los Angeles, a bus shelter next to a homeless encampment is covered with an image of a dollar bill with a homeless man stenciled over the note. In Brooklyn, a stencil shows a young boy trying to erase a semiautomatic rifle; on the barrel of the gun is a price tag of ninety-nine cents, a commentary on the ubiquity and accessibility of firearms in America. Despite gallery shows and a collaboration on a book project, ICY and SOT seem, for most of their career, to have been genuinely committed to creating work on the street, much of it uncommissioned and illegal. As such, they appear to be honoring the subversive culture in Iran from which they emerged and to use their newfound freedom of movement and expression to draw attention to issues of global concern. Yet, even they are not immune to the inclusion of street art in major commercial projects, as we will see in Chapter 8 which discusses their participation in the decoration of a shopping area in Dubai. Whether such activities signal that ICY and SOT are selling out and moving away from their roots or rather using high-profile opportunities to continue to spread a subversive and socially engaged message remains to be seen.

5

Bahrain: Building Community through Street Art

Bahrain is the only one of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to have experienced its own Arab Spring. This relatively brief surge of civil unrest in the winter and spring of 2011 reflected the long-standing, but historically suppressed, tensions between the Shia majority population of Bahrain and the Sunni royal family, the al-Khalifa. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the close political ties between the GCC nations and the West, notably the United States, the protests in Bahrain received less attention than the Arab Spring events in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. The street protests were quelled rapidly through a brutal government crackdown, and neither the demanded human rights reforms nor the desired regime change was forthcoming. This virtually total suppression of the visual, public manifestation of the unrest included the destruction, on government orders, of the monument in the so-called Pearl Roundabout, the location of the majority of the protests in the Bahraini capital of Manama. This monument represented a pearl lofted atop six twisting columns, in an abstract, modernist style popular in many Arab countries and celebrated the pearling industry which supported the tiny island nation prior to the discovery of oil. While the Pearl Roundabout location may have been chosen as a site for protests largely due to its centrality within the capital as well as for the fact that it afforded a large public space in which demonstrators could gather, it is worth noting the symbolism inherent in the connection of the protests to a marker of traditional Bahraini culture and to the modest roots of its citizens. The Shia protestors, while benefiting from the country’s oil wealth to a degree, are also the country’s poorest citizens and are both economically and politically marginalized by the Sunni ruling elite. Pearling was an industry that accentuated existing class differences in Bahraini society and widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The merchant class that owned the pearling ships stood to grow rich as a result of the low paid, or slave, labor of the divers, men who endured extremely

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difficult and dangerous conditions year after year, for three months at a time, to provide the pearls that made their masters rich. While pearling as an industry died out in Bahrain by the middle of the twentieth century, it is still celebrated as an important part of the nation’s heritage, as shown by the establishment in 2012 of the Pearling Trail as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The trail, as yet not fully completed, includes a variety of historic houses and other buildings in the older part of Manama, along with purposefully built exhibition spaces that tell the story of the pearling industry. As John Thabiti Willis has noted, however, the story told focuses largely on the merchants and their families, not on the divers.1 The less desirable or commendable elements of Bahraini society are written out of the country’s heritage in the same way that their contemporary counterparts are written out of the political story by the destruction of any reminders of protest. That the most significant site of such destruction should be a work of public art commemorating the pearling industry seems both ironic and oddly appropriate. If asked to give a list of countries with poor human rights records, it is unlikely that most people would immediately place Bahrain on that list. However, the Sunni government of the country has, for years, been ruthless in its suppression of free speech and there are regular arrests of human rights activists within the country. This crackdown accelerated and increased in intensity following the 2011 uprising and many activists and participants in those events have been jailed without trial or forced into exile. Immediately following the demonstrations, US president Barack Obama stated, “Mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens, and such steps will not make legitimate calls for reform go away. The only way forward is to engage in a dialogue and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.”2 Arms sales to the Kingdom were suspended in 2011 but have since resumed, a change in policy that reflects a reluctance on the part of the United States and Europe to cause tension with Gulf nations seen as allies. The role of street art in the Kingdom in the face of this dichotomy between the government’s whitewashing (often literally) of signs of protest, to which may be linked the West’s complicity in accepting that presentation of Bahraini stability and the ongoing refusal on the part of activists to accept the status quo in the country, is a complicated one. The tensions between these positions are reflected in the two main forms that writing on walls has taken in Bahrain: first, the production of revolutionary street art and, second, the production of colorful murals, devoid of political content, on the streets of Manama. These two forms of street art are, or were, to a certain extent inscribed in very different public spaces within Bahrain. As is the case with other GCC

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countries, foreign visitors to the Kingdom are unlikely to venture beyond the capital city of Manama, which presents the urban landscape of glass and steel characteristic of cities such as Doha, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi. One doesn’t have to travel far outside of Manama, however, to encounter a completely different side of Bahrain. Here, the desert landscape overtakes smaller cities and villages, punctuated in some areas by the curious burial mounds left by the ancient people of Dilmun, as the Kingdom of Bahrain was known from its settlement around the third millennium BCE.3 Once past these suburbs of the capital, vast oil fields spread out across the expanse of sand, a massive network of pipes and refineries that leaves no doubt as to the reason for the country’s growth and wealth. Oil production, however, peaked in the 1970s, leaving Bahrain with the dubious distinction as the Gulf ’s first post-oil economy. This designation is something of a misnomer, however, as a deal with Saudi Arabia provides the Kingdom with substantial shared revenues from an oil field currently in Saudi land that was once part of Bahrain’s territory. Thus, the economy of Bahrain, while attempting like many Arab states to diversify into areas such as banking and finance, still remains largely dependent on oil wealth. However, this wealth is generated through a shared agreement with another Gulf nation that is rapidly confronting its own post-oil reality.4 As with other rentier states in the region, Bahrain relies on the distribution of wealth from the oil economy to essentially pacify its citizens by providing a standard of living sufficiently high to discourage any civil or political actions against the government—that is to say, the monarchy. In Bahrain, however, unlike more stable GCC member states such as Oman, Qatar, and the UAE, this implicit financial and social contract has been historically frayed and, arguably, split entirely during the uprising of February 14, 2011. As Justin Gengler persuasively argues, the intensity and persistence of demands for political change in Bahrain are a clear example of unrest driven by what he describes as “a structural tendency in the Gulf toward ascriptive [denominational, regional or tribal] group politics, which in countries with diverse and/or regionally diffuse populations tends to induce political contestation not by citizens competing simply for additional allocations of state benefits qua individuals, but by larger ethnic-cum political groupings competing both over material benefits as well as over control of the polity itself.”5 Bahrain, with its inherent conflicts between the Shia majority population and the Sunni monarchy, is a textbook example of this observation. In rentier states, such as Bahrain and the other GCC countries, the government provides handsome subsidies to citizens—in part to ensure that unrest and articulated political discontent are kept to a minimum, if not suppressed entirely.

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While these subsidies sometimes take the form of cash handouts, a strategy employed by several countries, including Bahrain, during the Arab Spring, they are more importantly provided in the form of access to free higher education, well-paid employment in the government sector, subsidization of fuel prices, free healthcare, enhanced public services, and freedom from taxation. Given the intangibility, or at least limited measurability, of some of these subsidies, in addition to the lack of public data about their provision, it is difficult to ascertain whether they are truly distributed equally among Gulf Arab populations or whether there are discrepancies in their distribution. Justin Gengler has attempted to unpack some of that information, specifically in Bahrain, with a 2009 survey designed to identify gaps in access to these benefits between Shia and Sunni citizens of Bahrain. While acknowledging the limitations of this first attempt at such a quantitative analysis of this issue, Gengler obtained enough data to conclude that there are significant differences between Bahraini Shia and Sunni citizens in areas such as public-sector employment, infrastructure and public services, and ease of access to healthcare, with Sunni citizens receiving a disproportionately higher level of benefits. Gengler relates this finding to the relatively low participation by Sunnis in public protests such as those of 2011, despite the fact that individual Sunni citizens may have legitimate grievances with the state: Sunnis maintain a relatively constructive relationship with the state, yes, but not on account of altruism or sectarian affinity. The ruling family does not earn a free pass. For their near-unwavering support, and for their help in keeping the government’s fiercest critics at bay, ordinary Sunnis expect—and have shown themselves willing to demand—something in return. That they enjoy a disproportionate share of the state’s economic subsidies, therefore, is simply the government upholding its half of the unspoken agreement. Insofar as there exists in Bahrain a rentier bargain, this is it.6

However, it is too simplistic to argue that unrest and opposition in Bahrain or elsewhere is solely, or even primarily, the result of present economic injustices and may, in fact, be more importantly driven by perceived historical injustices. As such, Shia throughout the Arab world have come to be seen by many Sunni as inherently oppositional and disloyal to the ruling families of the Gulf and the governments of nominally democratic countries such as Egypt and Iraq. If the Shia are driven not purely by economic motives but rather by deep-seated distrust of the Sunnis and resistance to their authority, the ruling powers can do little to appease them; but they may be able to mobilize the general Sunni population to help in keeping the Shia threat under control.

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The sectarian divisions in Bahrain are publicly and painfully visible in the ongoing parliamentary struggles within the country. In 2001, Bahrainis voted in a referendum that resulted in the endorsement of political reforms centered around the creation of a new, parliamentary form of government: “The National Action Charter .  .  . called for the creation of a constitutional monarchy, a bicameral legislative structure comprised of an elected lower house and an appointed upper house, an independent judiciary, and women’s political participation.”7 The excitement generated by these reforms, particularly among the Shia of Bahrain, lasted little over a year, however. In 2002, the king elevated the status of the upper (appointed) house of parliament, the Majlis, such that it had sole authority to propose new legislation and to require financial oversight of government bodies. For the next several years, this setback constrained Shia participation in electoral politics and caused deep divisions between those Shia who advocated for participation in what remained of the elected parliament and those who argued against any such participation. Although Shia representation in parliament continued throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century through the election of members of the al-Wifaq “association” (political parties are banned in Bahrain), the inability of al-Wifaq to advance the social or political reforms demanded by its Shia constituency weakened its influence and, by 2010, the parliament was in disarray and the Shia majority, particularly young Bahrainis, were frustrated by the continued supremacy of the Sunni minority and their backing by the al-Khalifa family and the ruling elite. Thus, the dysfunctional state of Bahrain’s political system, at least as much as, if not more so, than economic inequality within the Kingdom, became the immediate catalyst for the protests of February 14, 2011. As we turn to particular examples of street art in Bahrain, it is important to understand these deep-seated sectarian and political divisions within Bahraini society for they form the backdrop against which street art is created and, at times, form the impetus for its creation.

Political street art Rana Jarbou highlights the presence and significance of graffiti in Bahrain, particularly in more isolated villages, prior to the uprisings of 2011.8 Since graffiti and street art in the Middle East, as elsewhere, are typically associated with urban centers, the undisturbed presence of graffiti in smaller communities in Bahrain seems unusual. It is in these villages, however, that the Shiite majority of the Kingdom live and, as such, their walls become the backdrop for praise of

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the martyr Hussein and celebrations of the battle of Karbala. These images are painted by local artists of varying degrees of skill and their function appears more votive than either aesthetic or propagandistic. The graffiti produced prior to the 2011 uprisings was focused on Shiite themes and rendered in sweeping Arabic calligraphy that puts it on a visual plane with the early work of eL Seed and other calligraffitists. These anonymous paintings included invocations such as “O God bestow your blessing upon Mohammad and the family of Mohammad” as well as simple venerations such as “O Hussain.” What is noticeable and compelling about the works is the attention to style and detail of the calligraphy, which is far more typical of Qur’anic texts than of anything that could be properly labeled graffiti. In communities that are already composed largely of Shia, it has not been historically necessary to create art that glorifies Shia ideology as a form of protest. It is only recently that overtly political messages have appeared, such as calls for the deposition of the Sunni monarchy. After the events of February 2011, changes in both the style and the messages appear. As was the case in the aftermath of many of the Arab Spring uprisings, stencil graffiti quickly emerged as a means to deploy key symbolic images in as many locations as possible and to allow people with no artistic training (or ability) to reproduce these symbols at will. Stencils were also smaller and could therefore be placed in more subtle and hard-to-reach locations, reducing the possibility that they would be erased by the authorities. In Bahrain, one of the most popular stencils showed the Pearl Roundabout, the symbolic heart of the uprisings, which was destroyed by government forces in March 2011. Sometimes just the image of the pearl monument was stenciled; sometimes it was coupled with text such as “We will return.”9 What characterized the stencils and their accompanying text, however, was a sense of urgency visually conveyed through hastily sprayed images and mottos that dotted the city of Manama as well as the villages. As in other countries where stenciled street art flourished during the Arab Spring, almost no examples of that produced in Bahrain are still visible. Yet the impermanence does not diminish the immediate visual effect of these simple works with powerful symbolic resonance. Before and after the spring of 2011, then, we see the presence of two different graffiti or street art cultures in Bahrain. That which was popular in villages prior to 2011 had both explicitly religious connotations and a visual link to a Qur’anic tradition through the use of Arabic script. The second, with its hastily stenciled and instantly recognizable symbols of protest, firmly linked Bahrain to the popular street art movement that was embraced throughout the Middle East during the Arab Spring.

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While the protests in the spring of 2011 were motivated by a variety of political and social concerns, in 2012 protestors concentrated their efforts to speak out, particularly, against the Formula 1 race scheduled to be held in Bahrain in that year. The Bahrain F1 Grand Prix had been held annually since 2004; however, the 2011 race was canceled due to security concerns posed by the spring demonstrations in the country. After much deliberation on the part of the Formula 1 governing body (the FIA World Motor Sport Council), the Bahrain Motor Federation, and other interested parties, the race was reinstated in 2012 and scheduled for April 22. In the months leading up to the event, there were widespread protests both within the Kingdom and internationally, with many calling for the cancellation or boycott of the event due to Bahrain’s ongoing human rights abuses and refusal to accede to the demands of pro-democracy activists. While these protests took the form of written statements and mass gatherings, they were also embodied through street art that appeared throughout the capital and in many villages all around Bahrain. As with other political street art produced in Bahrain during the Arab Spring, the images were rapidly transmitted through social media, even though the original works were often quickly whitewashed away by government employees.10 The works themselves were primarily large, spray-painted pieces that, although not highly finished, would have taken longer to create than stencils. The larger format and the options for detail afforded by spray paint offered the artists more opportunity to craft their message in a cartoon-like style that could be read more like a graphic novel than as iconic symbols of stencils. Despite the variation in style and subject components of these works, however,

Figure 17 Anti-Formula 1 Graffiti in Barbar, Bahrain. Photo credit: Mohamed CJ (CC BY-SA 3.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/3.0]), from Wikimedia Commons.

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certain themes emerged. As might be expected, most paintings incorporated an F-1 car, sometimes oriented as though driving directly at the viewer, at other times speeding across the wall. When a driver is shown, it is most often an image of King Hamad al Khalifa; in one work, Hamad is crammed into the driver’s seat with Bernie Ecclestone, the CEO of the Formula 1 organization. The two men grin as their race car belches tear gas behind it, a comment on the widespread use of the toxin to quell protests at the Pearl Roundabout and in villages throughout Bahrain. Slogans reading “Is not on our blood” and “Boycott F1 in Bahrain” bracket the car and are typical of anti-Formula 1 pieces. This image, as is the case with many others, is based on a political cartoon by the Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff, whose biting drawings not only criticize government oppression in Bahrain, but have focused attention on other Arab Spring revolts as well as on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In referencing the work of an international cartoonist whose work is published globally, the Bahraini artists behind these works insert themselves into a broader conversation about human rights and freedom of the speech and the press, civil liberties which are largely absent in the Kingdom. The addition of locally based slogans, such as “not on our blood,” generally written in both English and Arabic, connect the images to the specific history of the protests in Bahrain which saw the deaths of over thirty activists at the hands of the military and police as well as the detention of thousands more. As such, the anti-Formula 1 street art participates in a global dialogue while honoring local martyrs to the revolution.11 Anti-Formula 1 images became the hallmark of street art reflecting political protests in Bahrain and, to my knowledge, none of those works are still visible today. However, one can find in Manama much more subtle, yet still politically relevant, work, often produced in a style reminiscent of Banksy’s stencils and, sometimes, even of his designs. In one wheatpaste work, a woman in full, black hijab is carried aloft by a bunch of colorful balloons. The motif is visually similar to Banksy’s piece on the Israel-Palestine separation barrier showing a little girl lifted up by balloons as though to float over the barrier to freedom. In the Bahrain work, the contrast between the black of the woman’s robes and the colorful balloons suggests a tension between outward presentation and interior desire or ambition. Like the little girl in the painting in Palestine, this woman as well may wish to be carried away to a different reality. However, this interpretation must remain at the level of speculation; the woman’s eyes meet the viewer’s, but it is impossible to read her gaze. The group behind the work, the Prosperity Project, describe themselves as “a collaborative global effort to spread the symbol of prosperity through wheatpaste” and they use this image

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Figure 18 Woman with balloons, by the Prosperity Project, Manama, Bahrain. Photo credit: Author.

of the woman with balloons in locations throughout the Arab world.12 Thus, although “prosperity” is not explicitly defined in this context, it seems likely that the promotion of freedoms for Arab women forms part of the group’s agenda. This assumption is bolstered, for example, by the use of the image in support of the decision to allow women in Saudi Arabia to obtain driving licenses. As in other countries during the Arab Spring protests, the issue of women’s rights was addressed in Bahrain, though not with the same level of attention as found in, for example, Egypt. As a more traditional and conservative society, that this particular issue should fade somewhat into the background in Bahrain is perhaps not surprising; that it lives on in street art, however, suggests that it is not entirely without cultural relevance. Another wheatpaste work found on the streets in Manama shows a young, smiling boy apparently watering the plants that are growing in front of the piece. On closer inspection, we note that the watering can is in fact a gas pump, a persistent reminder of the true source of growth in Bahrain: not water, but oil. The image of a gas pump has been used in protest art on numerous occasions and in that respect this anonymous street artist is situating his or her work within a larger visual tradition. However, if we assume that the artist is Bahraini (as most of the artists working in Manama are), the work takes on a new resonance as a critique of an oil-based economy from a local perspective. That is, the artist

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Figure 19 Street art in Adliya neighborhood, Manama, Bahrain. Photo credit: Author.

creating the work is likely, in some respect, benefiting from the oil wealth of Bahrain while, at the same time, offering a critical and perhaps cautionary tale about the insidious nature of these benefits, which have become so integral to Bahraini society that it is difficult to see a future beyond oil.

Promoting culture through street art While street art related to the Formula 1 protests has become, in some ways, the external face of the movement in Bahrain, there are other artists whose works, even when produced under the aegis of ministries or corporations, show a revolutionary character simply by being created at all in this tiny, island nation with, at best, a nascent street art scene. Artists such as Huvil and Leon D are keenly aware of Western street art and its role within contemporary

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Western society. They understand that some may see the less rebellious work produced in Bahrain as not true street art, not validated by the aura of illegality and risk that pervades the practice in the West. Yet these artists are not only conscious of but also respectful toward their particular cultural context. As Leon D says to young street artists, “If you can do it legally, do it.”13 Perhaps out of recognition of the gap between his practice, or performance, of street art and that of Western artists, Leon D also declines to label himself as a graffiti or street artist, preferring terms such as “muralist” or “illustrator.” Huvil, while more readily claiming the role of street artist, also acknowledges the vast differences between the practice in the West and that in Bahrain. He counters the likely erasure of illicitly produced street art in two ways: by capturing and disseminating work on social media and by relying on commissions to create his largest works. In a profile of Huvil in the series The Khaleeji Voice, Quentin de Pimodan reflects on the difficulties faced by street artists and concludes that “the complexity of the scene can’t be summed up by judgments made thousands of kilometres away, with a simplistic argument that genuine street art is intrinsically rebellious.”14 This observation is germane not only to the street art scene in Bahrain but to that in many Gulf countries. Huvil, whose real name is Mahmood Al-Shargawi, has been gaining prominence in both the Bahraini and the regional street art scene for both his artwork and his efforts to grow and gain acceptance for street art in his country. Huvil creates large-scale murals, often featuring the faces of Bahraini women, and has seen his work featured in gallery exhibitions and in corporate commissions from companies including the telecommunications firm Batelco and energy drink Red Bull. Recently, he has opened Colormaze, a store specializing in street art materials, from which he hopes to raise awareness of the medium and to encourage new practitioners. This venture aligns with his educational outreach in offering workshops to young artists and supports his general goal of “build[ing] a better graffiti community.”15 The artist states, “I want to get rid of the negativity attached to street art and show that it can be a respectful and uplifting art form that will make people smile rather than cringe. I hope more artists join this art field and help change the image of street art in Bahrain.”16 Like many street artists in the Gulf, Huvil walks a fine line between respecting and honoring his country’s heritage while infusing his work with an inescapably Western style that, arguably, is intended to raise the profile of Bahraini, or Gulf, graffiti within a larger street art culture. This balance between Eastern and Western influences can be seen in the visual style of some of Huvil’s best-known works, particularly those featuring images

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of Bahraini, or Gulf, women. In most cases, the women have partially obscured faces, often covered by the traditional burqa, which in Bahrain, as in most Gulf countries, resembles a mask, rather than a veil. Many of these women do not have particularly Arabian features and are depicted unveiled, an odd contrast to the burqa. In the Gulf, the burqa is favored by older women and is seen as a traditional style of covering not generally embraced by a younger generation. Younger women, who choose to be more fully covered than just with the shayla, or headscarf, most often opt for the niqab, a black cloth that covers all of the face except for the eyes. Huvil’s burqa-adorned women, all of whom are young and attractive, create a disjointed image of womanhood in the Gulf. They are not of the right age to be wearing the burqa and their sensual features and uncovered hair seem to contradict the traditional role of the accessory as an indicator of modesty. They can be seen as bearers of cultural heritage in their adoption of the traditional covering but, at the same time, they contravene and, perhaps, even subvert that heritage in their decidedly Western-influenced appearance beyond the burqa. Huvil’s fascination with covered women does not stop with the burqa, however. In a 2016 mural created for Bahrain’s Dragon Mall, the artist depicts an Asian woman with a fan covering her nose and mouth, leaving only her eyes exposed. Like the burqa-covered women, her features are Westernized and her expression is seductive. The face, hair, and background are rendered in black and white, while the red fan draws the viewer’s attention instantly to the sultry eyes. Meeting her gaze, images of geishas and other tropes of the sexualized Asian female come to mind—visions both out of keeping with the mural’s location in a conservative Gulf state and yet strangely harmonious with Huvil’s representation of Arab womanhood. As far back as 2014, in a mural done for Al Riwaq Art Space’s “the Nest” event, Huvil was painting partially covered women: in this case, a young girl of indeterminate ethnic origin who holds a rose over her nose and mouth, not obscuring her face to the same extent as the burqa and fan, but creating a similar effect. The mural, which renders the face in a rather bilious shade of green, is not of the same graphic standard as Huvil’s more recent works and visually less compelling. Nonetheless, it seems to point to a persistent motif and, perhaps, message in the artist’s work, one which appears to render women as silent objects—they are beautiful and exotic but without voice or agency. The artist has said that his representations of women “pay tribute to beauty, perfection and happiness” but happiness is difficult to gauge when beauty and perfection appear to have rendered his subjects speechless.

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A second prominent street artist in Bahrain, but one whose work takes a different approach to that of Huvil both in subject and in style, is Leon D (Mohamed Alaabar). Leon D has been a practicing street artist for longer than Huvil and his work is better known internationally. As early as 2010 he participated in a group show at the Temple Works art space in Leeds, UK, as part of the collective Best Joined Up, an “independent U.K. based creative collective and social enterprise that has been gathering together the leading lights in Illustration, Aerosol/Street Art, Design and Animation from across the U.K. to their Live Art Events and Exhibitions since 2005.”17 Leon D’s collaboration with such a broad-based group, particularly one that combines illustration and street art, is not surprising given his preferred visual style. Whether working on largescale street art projects or smaller canvases and works on paper intended for gallery display, Leon D’s work tends distinctly toward the illustrative—in contrast to Huvil’s bright, simple lines—and focuses on aerosol effects. As an illustrator, it is not surprising that one of Leon D’s best-known projects in Bahrain was Paste It, an event specifically designed to encourage the development of the street art scene in Bahrain through the creation of works using the wheatpaste technique popularized by Shepard Fairey and other international artists. Leon D’s own work, whether in wheatpaste or other media, often incorporates Arabic text with figurative imagery, thereby both linking him with the style of calligraffitists such as eL Seed while maintaining his own visual identity through the inclusion of figurative elements. In many respects, Leon D is a much more subtle artist than peers such as Huvil. In his profile of Leon D in The Khaleeji Voice, Quentin de Pimodan characterizes the artist as humble, recognizing the different, less risky, path taken by street artists in his own country as opposed to many international artists, Leon D prefers not to characterize himself as a street or graffiti artist but rather as a muralist or illustrator. De Pimodan sees this choice as “humility [which] stems from an understanding of what has been achieved in other countries. All these [Gulf] artists ask is this same understanding in return.”18 In other words, Middle East, particularly Gulf, artists such as Leon D know that neither their style nor their practice bears an exact comparison to that of artists such as Banksy or other anonymous artists who operate illegally or at the margins of legality. However, they do not see that distinction as rendering their work unworthy or uninteresting. As de Pimodan states, “These artists are educated, open-minded, multi-linguists that don’t have any more lessons to learn from abroad, they know more about other cultures than others know about theirs. They are proud of their heritage and are very aware of the damage

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that could be done by inheriting and alternate culture.”19 Leon D represents this cadre of thoughtful, visually sophisticated street artists and illustrators whose work, despite its lack of overt cultural or heritage symbols, has a profound effect on raising the profile of street art not only within the country of Bahrain but within a regional and, eventually, international context. Iraqi artist Sinan Hussein is one of a growing number of international artists who have created works of street art in Bahrain, many of whom have been brought to the country by the nonprofit Al Riwaq Art Space, housed in the trendy Adliya neighborhood of Manama. Hussein, who now lives in the United States, is a painter who generally works in oil on canvas at a smaller scale, but who produced two large murals in the streets near the gallery. Hussein’s works have a strongly surrealist character; figures float through space and morph into other creatures, he plays with scale and his compositions are fluid and unstable. This is a style of street art that is far from that seen in other works around Manama, and it is apparent that these are the works of an artist who came to the street from working on canvas, rather than the other way around. As such, Hussein’s murals blur the boundaries between the gallery and the street, yet not in the expected way of a street artist who creates smaller works for show and sale within the gallery context. Here, Hussein elaborates on his fantastical paintings to bring

Figure 20 Sinan Hussein, Mural in Adliya neighborhood (detail), Manama, Bahrain. Photo credit: Author.

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a world of bizarre, sometimes whimsical and sometimes disturbing, characters to passersby. Those who would be unlikely to ever encounter such work in a gallery setting may instead see and respond to it on the streets, an important site of exchange in a neighborhood like Adliya, where new restaurants, shops, and galleries are emerging alongside traditional establishments. While there may be a cultural divide between the old and the new in this community, the streets become a place where visual art can bridge that divide, creating opportunities for exploring differences and encouraging dialogue. One additional form of street art in Bahrain is that which celebrates the culture and heritage of the country and is often found along streets and highways, public buildings, and heritage sites. This heritage street art, which will be discussed further in the chapters on Oman and the UAE, is quite common in Gulf countries and serves to reinforce a very specific narrative of national identity. As discussed previously, the national identity of Bahrain, with its mixed Sunni and Shia population, is a complicated one, and it is difficult to know with certainty whether such murals are meant to unify an often divided country or to reify government, and thus Sunni, authority. The motifs presented are quite apolitical in nature, often showing fishing or pearling, the desert, traditional architecture, or the flag of Bahrain, and, thus, it is likely that the murals are intended to present a picture of the Kingdom as one whose shared past points to an optimistic future. Between the promotion of both local and international street artists as part of a developing cultural sector in Bahrain and the inclusion of street art as a component of heritage sites, the country seems to be on its way toward recuperating the image of graffiti and street art as a marker of the protests of 2011 and repackaging this mode of representation as a means to show Bahrain’s revered traditions and desired future.

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Oman: Promoting History and Culture on the Streets

Though far quieter and less internationally prominent than its wealthy neighbors to the northwest, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, or the war-ravaged Yemen to the southwest, Oman is the second largest GCC country and encompasses a diverse landscape. As with Bahrain, the effect of the Arab Spring on Oman has received relatively little attention compared to the coverage and analysis of the events in other countries in the region. However, although little was reported and perhaps even less remembered, Oman did experience a wave of protests during the spring of 2011.1 Interestingly, these started even earlier than those in Egypt; the first small demonstration, held in Muscat on January 17, 2011, focused on demands for higher wages and lower prices on basic goods, in addition to calls for curbs on government corruption. This and a subsequent series of small protests, including some led by teachers, led eventually to larger and more serious events in late February. These protests centered in the port city of Sohar and turned violent, with protestors burning and looting shops and police firing rubber bullets into the crowds. At least one protestor was killed during the demonstrations. While the reasons for the protests were, in some respects, varied, with some protestors focused more on immediate economic needs and some more on reforms of government systems, such as education, there is no doubt that the high unemployment rate in the sultanate, particularly among young people, was a strong contributing factor. Among the GCC states, Oman has a high unemployment rate: in 2011, approximately 15 percent overall and close to 20 percent among youth. Many researchers see this as linked to a poor education system; thus, it is no surprise that university teachers and students formed a key group among the protestors with their own specific sets of demands. The protests in Oman largely died out during the summer of 2011, but left the country with a new sense of urgency in relation to desired reforms and demands for change.

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James Worrall, while noting that the demands of protestors in Oman were “bewildering in their number and often in their specificity” breaks the main issues into three categories: economic, social, and political.2 Very broadly, these may be summarized as primarily concerned with unemployment (economic), education (social), and corruption (political). While the specificities of the issues at stake are beyond the scope of this book, it is worth noting that the Omani protestors, unlike those in all other Arab Spring countries, were not calling for the removal of the ruler (although the resignations of some government ministers were called for). This caveat is mentioned not to diminish the importance of the protests or to question the desirability of the reforms they sought but simply to note key differences in the Omani context. Protestors were not seeking the overthrow of the sultan but, rather, were urging him to pay attention to their demands and to seek peaceful resolutions to the social and political problems they identified in Oman. Another unusual factor in Oman was the relatively rapid direct engagement with the protestors on the part of the sultan, beginning as early as March 2011. As Worrall states, “This active engagement, alongside the concessions and the overwhelming support for the sultan himself, marked the Oman Spring as rather different from uprisings elsewhere.”3 This spirit of rapprochement and compromise marked the Omani Arab Spring as distinct from the overall turmoil and the calls for radical reform gripping the region. However, the same problems that are faced by other Gulf monarchies, particularly the unsustainable model of the rentier state in the face of limited and dwindling oil reserves, make it unlikely that the concerns which motivated the protests of 2011 will not emerge again in Oman, particularly when the rule of the extremely popular Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said comes to an end.

Nizwa: Capital of Islamic culture In 2015, the sleepy, provincial city of Nizwa, Oman, was named the capital of Islamic culture by the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO). Formerly the capital of the country, before the coastal city of Muscat was named the capital, Nizwa has maintained a reputation as a significant heritage site in Oman. Located at the foothills of some of the most impressive peaks in the Hajar mountain range, Nizwa serves as a regional hub for trade and industry and is also an important crossroads between the mountains and the coast. The selection of the city as a capital of Islamic culture was intended as an acknowledgment of “the position of the historic, civilised, religious and

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culturally ancient city, [as well as] its landmarks and scholars, who had played a remarkable role in the Omani and Islamic history and civilization.”4 Among the various cultural programs and educational events staged during the 2015 celebrations, the conversion of Nizwa Square into “Art and Culture Square” received substantial press coverage as a highlight of the year’s events. The development of Arts and Culture Square focused largely on the production of paintings by Omani artists that “embody the milestones and landmarks of Nizwa.”5 The paintings, while not uniform, are executed in a similar style that favors bright colors that mimic the blues, ochers, and tans of the surrounding desert and mountain environment. In some cases, the paintings take an historical bent; in others, their reflections on culture and cultural memory are more abstract. In one example, the artist has painted a replica of an old wooden door, the original of which is also housed in the square and marked as an archaeological object. As such, the painting takes on a metonymical character, the modern object both reflecting and replacing the original. There are eleven paintings in the Nizwa Art and Culture Square, arranged on both the interior walls and one exterior wall surrounding the square. The square itself is a relatively small but pleasant place, located adjacent to Nizwa’s main tourist attractions of the Nizwa fort and souq. Despite its proximity to these destinations, however, the fact that the square is bounded by a busy road and

Figure 21 Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author.

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a parking lot limits the ability of visitors to the fort and souq to see that there is something special about the location that would draw them over to look at the artwork. The parked cars tend to obscure the works that are placed on the exterior wall facing the souq and, although the small plaque identifying the space as Art and Culture Square is positioned at the entrance to the square, that wall is unlikely to be seen by casual passersby. Thus, the artwork within and around the square is likely to have only local residents as its primary viewers. Perhaps that is fitting, given the strong local focus of the art presented; however, the lack of visibility to outside visitors seems to defeat the purpose of the project as a public celebration and commemoration of Nizwa’s heritage and vibrant culture. The paintings themselves fall into two overlapping categories: architectural scenes and images of people. The styles range from abstract to highly realistic, with most tending toward realism rather than abstraction. In many of the paintings, the artist makes use of traditional Islamic motifs such as calligraphy or mashrabiya patterns, often to overlay or frame the composition. Six of the paintings incorporate images of mosques, or elements of mosques, which is fitting given Nizwa’s traditional status as a center of Islamic learning and law. Taken as a whole, the paintings seem to reflect a communal sense of which visual signs are important in conveying the heritage and culture of Nizwa. However, it is worth examining some of the works in more detail to identify key themes that both reify and complicate that common narrative. Only three of the paintings focus on figures and they take very different approaches in both subject and style. The painting titled Heritage, by Hamad Al-Salimi, portrays a young woman wearing traditional Omani jewelry and a festive dress and is the only work that shows a female figure. The woman is shown in three-quarter view, recalling a traditional Western pose used for female portraits such as those painted during the Renaissance. She is unsmiling, even serious, and her gaze is averted from the viewer, perhaps in deference to the Muslim belief in the importance of modesty for women. However, she is not veiled, suggesting that her representation, even while found in a public space, may be intended to evoke in the mind’s eye of the viewer an image of an Omani woman at home, in her private space. The lower left corner of the painting is filled with domestic objects that would typically be found in the majlis (reception area) or in more private spaces of an Omani home. These include the della, a distinctively shaped coffeepot ubiquitous in the Gulf region; a bakhoor, or incense, set; and a small Qur’an box with a chain, indicating that it is for personal use. Such objects, through their domestic associations,

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Figure 22 Hamad Al-Salimi, Heritage, 2015, Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author.

are also associated more with women; however, they would not have been used exclusively by female members of the household. Although the items are painted in white, it is likely that the artist intended for viewers to assume that they would be made of silver, a traditional Omani craft material. The entire space of the painting is covered in densely layered calligraphy which in some areas forms the only visual element in the composition and in others is layered behind or even in front of the woman’s portrait and of the various objects. With the possible exception of a few letters here and there, the text is so dense and abstracted that it is impossible to read, functioning instead as a pattern that both enlivens the painting and creates a certain sense of horror vacui. The fact that the calligraphic text encroaches over the figure of the woman while settling only behind the household objects serves to move her into the background while, quite literally, foregrounding the functional and symbolic items. Moreover, the silver jewelry the woman wears around her neck connects visually in terms of color, shape, and tone with the other objects, drawing the eye away from her face and toward the inanimate occupants of the painting’s space. A feminist reading of this image might contend that the drawing of the gaze away from the female

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subject, particularly away from her identity as symbolized by her face, represents a privileging of the object over the subject and a representation of the feminine through domestic objects rather than through an individual woman. A reading of the image so freighted with gendered significance is probably not reflective of the artist’s intentions for the work. It may, however, be valid as a possible interpretation, whether conscious or unconscious, on the part of the viewer. As with the woman’s averted gaze, her partial obscuring by objects representing the heritage of the work’s title may serve as a subtle but vital reminder of a woman’s secondary and semi-invisible role in Omani society, particularly in traditional society. Anwar Sonya, one of Oman’s best-known artists and a founder of the Omani arts movement, contributed the painting titled Announcement to the square. Painted largely in muted shades of brown and tan, the painting differs from the others in its focus on a large group of people crowded in the center of the composition. Many have their backs to the viewer; the few whose faces are visible are rendered with such loose brushstrokes that their features are often indistinguishable. In the foreground of the painting, a few goats or sheep

Figure 23 Anwar Sonya, Announcement, 2015, Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author.

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are shown only as outlines of their forms. This outlining highlights one of the unusual features of the painting; the artist has framed the central, figural group with stones that mimic the actual stone border of the painting. The few elements of the painting that cross onto the stone, the sheep, a crouching man, and the tops of a few buildings in the background are rendered only as brown outlines. Yet, where those elements overlap with the central figure group, they too take on the dark brown shades of the figures themselves. In this way, Sonya creates a sense that the viewer is peering over or into a crumbling stone wall to take in the scene beyond. This may be intended as a perspectival device or even as a trompe l’oeil element in the painting. Rural Omani towns are also filled with crumbling walls and buildings and the artist may be referencing the decaying architectural elements seen throughout the region. The title of the painting, Announcement, is enigmatic (at least in its English translation). The painting is described as representation of the auction held regularly in the Nizwa Souq, a continuation of an ancient tradition that still has both utilitarian and symbolic value today.6 The sheep in the foreground is likely intended as a reference to the livestock auctions and the dense group of people indicates that this is still an event of significance that draws a crowd. Exactly what announcement is being made is unclear: is it the start of the auction or the result of a particularly interesting or important sale? While the viewer cannot be sure of the exact moment portrayed, it is perhaps enough to recognize in the scene the artist’s keen awareness of the vitality of the town of Nizwa and the ways in which that ongoing energy ties to the city’s important role in the history of Oman. As a city with an important religious heritage and history as one of the most devout sites of Islamic study and practice in Oman, it is fitting that several of the paintings in Arts and Culture Square should include elements of mosque architecture, notably of the beautiful and iconic domes that punctuate the city’s skyline. Nizwa is home to a number of historic mosques and is now also the site of the newly built (2015) Sultan Qaboos Mosque, the largest outside of Muscat.7 The Nizwa mosques are notable for the distinctive patterns on their domes, which are slightly bulbous in shape, appearing closer to the Persian style that to that typically found in the Gulf region.8 Thus, these mosques are both markers of civic and religious identity for the city and structurally and decoratively significant examples of regional Omani architecture. Two of the paintings appear to specifically show the Friday Mosque, which is located near the Nizwa fort and, as such, features prominently in many tourist photos of

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the city. In both cases, the mosque is framed by an architectural element: one painting shows the mosque in the middle ground, framed by an elaborately patterned screen with the Hajar mountain range highlighted in the background; the other places the dome of the mosque directly in front of the main tower of the fort and the viewer sees both through an arch with four niches at the bottom, a form that is reminiscent both of a mihrab and of a typical prayer rug design. The typical mashrabiya pattern is visible here as well, although it is lightly painted, at points fading in and out of the background of the painting. In a third painting, Nizwa by Mohammed Al-Sayegh, only the distinctive dome of the Friday Mosque is present, although screened, as is most of the composition of the painting, by abstract calligraphic strokes. The calligraphy entwines and merges with the few recognizable elements in the painting, notably the mosque itself and two palm trees. Nizwa is renowned for the production of khalas and khunaizi dates, both of which are in high demand in the rest of Oman as well as the broader region.9 This painting is the only one that apparently references

Figure 24 Mohammed Al-Sayegh, Nizwa, 2015, Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author.

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this other important element of Nizwa’s heritage: its position as an agricultural center that serves not only its immediate area but other regions of the country as well. Perhaps, the physical manifestations of Nizwa’s cultural heritage were more popular or deemed more appropriate representations of the city during its time as capital of Islamic culture, however that culture was and is supported, in part, by agricultural activities such as date production and the popular livestock market that has taken place outside the souq each week for centuries, an event that continues today, as seen in Sonya’s Announcement. Three paintings present a view of the Nizwa cityscape, albeit in a rather diffuse and abstracted form. One offers a vertically oriented view of rather generic structures that show several common building types in Nizwa. The buildings appear piled on top of one another and the perspective of the painting is reminiscent both of early Renaissance cityscapes and of protocubist works by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Thus, intentionally or not, the painting connects to both early and late modern visual prototypes, yet its inclusion of distinctly Arabian forms ties it firmly to its cultural and geographical locale. In another work, the artist includes a recognizable view of the Nizwa fort as well as a view, through an archway, of what may be the narrow streets of the souq. These architectural elements are overlaid on the right side of the work by fragments of decorative items, including a traditional Omani vase and rug as well as patterned objects such as tiles and screens. The upper left corner of the painting is filled only with the deep blue of the sky, which contrasts with the warm tan of the buildings to capture the quality of light in Nizwa and throughout the region. Finally, the third painting is the most abstract of this group; although it includes similar elements as are found in the first two paintings, these are harder to pick out of the background which is painted with loose brushstrokes in vibrant hues of red, orange, and yellow. Darker elements highlight details here and there—these are mostly elements of patterns, although the dome of a mosque, with its distinctive crescent moon, is clearly visible in the center of the image. Perhaps by rendering the mosque as the most recognizable element in the painting, the artist wishes to foreground the significance of religion as a cultural identifier while alluding to aesthetic forms, but in a more subtle way. Two paintings in the square feature doors; however, the artists approach their subjects in quite different ways. One shows the arched doorway marking the entrance to the Nizwa fort. The door is labeled as such and is rendered in a realistic style that seems keen to accurately capture the visual elements of

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this architectural element. The door occupies the center of the image and is surrounded by two areas of calligraphy: a lighter background forming a square in which the door is centered and then a darker frame around the edge of the image. As with the other paintings in which calligraphy is featured, this is an abstracted form in which the decorative qualities of the script are privileged over its linguistic function. A detail of another antique door is the subject of the second painting, The Door by Abdulmajeed Karooh. Although this painting is in many ways highly realistic, calling to mind the trompe l’oeil experiments of nineteenth-century American painters such as William Harnett, the focus on only a portion of the door, which fills the entire space of the painting’s niche, also lends an abstract quality to the work. The door that the artist is representing is, like that of the Nizwa fort, easily identifiable; in fact, the model is located just a few feet away from the painting, hanging at the entrance to the Arts and Culture Square. Unlike the door to the Nizwa fort, however, this is no longer a functional portal, but is featured instead as an archaeological object (it is actually identified only as “Door Archaeologica” on its label). Pulled, literally, from its original setting with no contextualizing details, the door serves as an explicit symbol of Nizwa’s architectural heritage and as an oblique reference to the loss

Figure 25 Abdulmajeed Karooh, The Door, 2015 (shown with original door on the right), Art and Culture Square, Nizwa, Oman. Photo credit: Author.

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of that heritage and of the history that it represents. By presenting a further fragmented image of this object, the painting continues a paradoxical practice of both remembering and forgetting at the same time.

Nizwa in context To the outside observer, particularly one familiar with the urban history and contemporary practice of street art, the labeling of the Nizwa paintings as street art might seem a stretch, if not an outright misuse of the term. Not only are they officially sanctioned and celebrated, but also their display is carefully calibrated to reflect techniques closer to those used by Renaissance fresco painters than to the styles favored by most international street artists. Framed and deliberately spaced around the interior and exterior wall of the square they encourage a certain viewing pattern and response on the part of the viewer, one that is more similar to the experience of viewing works in a gallery than to that of viewing works on the street. The presence of painted vases, examples of the traditional pottery produced in the region, contributes to the feeling of the square as decorative rather than urban in nature and the quiet streets surrounding it, despite its presence on a main route through the city, do little to add excitement or a feeling of connection to a thriving contemporary art practice. And yet, local, regional, and national news outlets regularly describe the works as street art, suggesting that the term carries a cultural valence that is seen as important to address or impart in this context. While it is impossible to make a definitive connection between the relatively benign experience of Arab Spring protests in Oman and the street art produced four years later in Nizwa, I do want to suggest that elements of the protestors’ and the government’s response to those events are reflective of a culture in Oman that frames its national identity on shared history as well as on a shared commitment to and support of the more-thanforty-year rule of Sultan al Qaboos. It is unsurprising, then, that Nizwa should privilege and encourage artwork that valorizes that shared Omani history when putting a public face to the world as the capital of Islamic culture. Despite internal conflicts dating as recently as the mid-twentieth century—notably those between the religious leadership in Nizwa and the surrounding area and the more secular government in Muscat—Oman has defined itself as a state apart from its neighbors on the Arabian peninsula. This is most apparent in Oman’s tense historical and current relationship with its neighbor, the UAE. Despite many shared characteristics and even similarities in national goals and priorities,

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the still-simmering border disputes between the two countries have contributed to the sense of Oman as a state apart—self-reliant and closely guarded.

Nizwa street art in context The mode of display of the street art works in Nizwa, which uses a public space to nonetheless support a local and almost private interaction with the artwork, can be analyzed in terms of the role of public places in contemporary society. Luca Visconti and his colleagues employed analytical strategies based in the discipline of marketing to analyze the role of street art as a factor in the consumption of public space as a public good. Street art and its public reception by “dwellers” form a lens through which the authors investigate larger issues of public space consumption and of the conversion of “space” (anonymous) to “place” (distinctive site) within an urban community.10 The authors argue that the presence of street art forces the dwellers in a public place to take an active role in the development of an ideology of that place—an ideology which then determines the consumption of the public place. While a discussion of the full scope of their argument goes beyond that of this book, their analysis of the role that street art can play in reclaiming public place through an active and dialogic interaction with its dwellers can be useful in understanding the role of street art in communities such as Nizwa. Visconti et al. developed an interpretive model of consumption ideologies of public space and two of these ideologies may be used to analyze the way in which street art functions in Nizwa: dwellers’ resistance to the alienation of public space and joint striving for common place. The ideology of dwellers’ resistance to the alienation of public space hinges on an acknowledgment of the dichotomous role that street art can play: “They [dwellers] often allow that certain interventions add to the place while others contribute to its decay.”11 Further, there is an understanding that the “location of street art is of overwhelming importance.”12 Thus, street art deployed on the walls of stores and other private buildings in Nizwa would logically be viewed as an intervention contributing to the decay of the public place (and by extension of the community), whereas street art deployed within the defined and controlled space of a public square is seen to add to the place. Within this ideological construct, the authors also point to the need to defend the authentic voice of the place, as a strategy to resist individualizing impulses that can destroy the public space. Dwellers who value and seek to defend the authentic voice “suggest that each space has its history and cultural identity that

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can be more respectfully incorporated into street art practices when native, local artists are enlisted,” a strategy employed in the Nizwa street art project.13 This drive to maintain the authenticity of a public space is further developed through the other element of public space consumption: striving for common place. Creating a common place requires a connection between artists and dwellers as well as an acknowledgment that the visions of the place held by both parties must be validated in order to strive toward a common vision of public place. Such connection can only be achieved through a dialogue, a give and take between the two groups, albeit one in which the street artists assume the role of outsider looking in to understand the aesthetic vision of the dwellers. As such, “aesthetic agency becomes the impetus to the social change of connection, belonging and community; redesign re-enchants the cityscape, encouraging proactive and responsible dwelling, as if artists could view towns through the eyes of dwellers envisioning rejuvenated public places.”14 While such a lofty claim might seem more appropriate to a massive urban street art project rather than the more modest intervention in Nizwa, the basic principles still hold: street art creates a sense of community, through its use of visual means, to forge a sense of shared identity and cultural responsibility. Fakhriya Al-Yahyai discusses the ways in which contemporary Omani painters address issues of cultural identity in their work, through the use of certain motifs, symbols, and visual styles.15 Al-Yahyai relies on discussions of globalization and its impact on the Arab world to frame and guide her discussion and the essay is not free from a sense of bias in favor of artists who do foreground Omani identity in their work and who do so in ways that can be read as authentic. For example, Al-Yahyai cites other critics and scholars who feel that an importation of symbols from other cultures has displaced Omani heritage as a distinct feature of the country’s fine art. This importation of both Western cultural symbols and Western artistic styles, notably by artists who have trained abroad, raises the danger of crowding out or replacing traditional Omani symbols in art: a visual equivalent of the replacing of traditional Omani (Arab) social and religious values as a result of globalization. Al-Yahyai counters the idea of a wholesale co-optation of Omani artistic production, asserting that “most Omani artists who follow the trends and styles of the Western schools do not ignore their Omani identity or Omani cultural symbols,” yet cautioning that “the process of reflecting identity is not merely one of copying and reproducing cultural details; rather, it involves forming a new understanding and crystallizing a contemporary concept of heritage.”16

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Al-Yahyai appears to acknowledge, if obliquely, the difficulty faced by Omani and other Arab artists who wish to draw on knowledge of Western techniques and subject matter while heeding the call of many local and regional critics to address and represent issues of cultural identity and heritage in their work. The burden that can be placed on these artists is made clear by Al-Yahyai’s claim that “the role of an artist is as important as that of a politician in sustaining the identity of a civilization or nation: an artist can influence the thinking of the public and thought-leaders through visual works that depict the philosophy, principles, and customs of Omani society.”17 This is quite a responsibility. For the artists whose work was featured in Nizwa, the mandate to honor and reference their Omani, Islamic, and Arab heritage, if not explicitly mandated, was surely felt. Although Nizwa may appear to Western visitors as a sleepy mountain town with little relevance to the broader cultural sphere, its nomination as the capital of Islamic culture was taken very seriously by the citizens of Nizwa and by the citizens and, importantly, the royal family and government of Oman. It is useful to consider the following injunction given by Al-Yahyai at the close of the study: “It is essential that [Omani] artists pay greater attention to things around them so that they do not suffer a similar fate to that of other Arab cultures due to the impact of the global era on their heritage.”18 In other words, Oman has thus far withstood the temptation to embrace Western modernity unlike some other Arab nations, notably the UAE and Qatar. The concept of soft power, as coined by Joseph Nye in 1990 and used since then in the field of international affairs, has relevance here. However, rather than the common usage of soft power as a term referring to Western nations’ attempts to attract, rather than coerce, other countries to follow their plans or ideals, in the context of Oman, soft power is being used internally by the country’s artists. That is to say, the Omani artists who use heritage symbols and other markers of traditional Omani identity in work that is considered aesthetically pleasing and visually persuasive by other Omanis are using a kind of soft power to reinforce the value of Omani cultural heritage and identity over imported Western ideal. The works shown in Nizwa can usefully be read in that context as far more than a decorative contribution to the town’s moment of fame as capital of Islamic culture.

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Tunisia: Street Art and Tourism in the Djerbahood

Tunisia was the first country to experience the events of the Arab Spring, with the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in December 2010 providing the catalyst for a popular uprising that ultimately led to the overthrow of President Ben Ali in January 2011. Thus, the initial act of defiance in the face of a repressive government, as well as subsequent acts of protest and demands for reform, took place in the public spaces of Tunis and other Tunisian cities. As Charles Tripp writes, “Through the use of their bodies, amplified through visual and artistic interventions, members of the public asserted themselves and their right to be taken seriously.”1 The public spaces of Tunisia were, and continue to be, the primary sites of such interventions and assertions. Although Tripp provides an intriguing analysis of the ways in which art forms such as dance, theatre, and music used public space as a place of staging protests and encouraging dialogue around difficult political and social issues, it is the role of street art both during and after the revolution that is of interest here. Several of the actions and forms of expression adopted by Tunisian visual artists have parallels in other Arab Spring countries, notably Egypt, suggesting that a common, if unconscious, understanding of how the street and public spaces generally might best be exploited as a site of activism through visual means. For example, billboards displaying the face of Ben Ali were altered to replace Ben Ali’s likeness with that of an ordinary Tunisian—a refashioning of the political portrait, such as that undertaken in Cairo with the portrait of Mubarak. Like Ammar Abo Bakr with his portraits of martyred Egyptian protestors, the Tunisian street artist Zoo Project painted murals throughout public spaces in Tunis showing those killed in the revolution. And as with the Revolution Artists Association group that formed in Tahrir Square during January and February of 2011, the protests in Casbah Square in Tunis gave rise to artist collectives such as Ahl al-Khaf and ZIT (Zombie Intervention Tunisie).2 Ahl al-Khaf was the first group to actively

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bring together and organize street artists working in and around Casbah Square during the protests and a spokesperson for the group underscored their belief in the interconnectedness of art and politics: “Politics for us is not based on democracy and parliament, but is the politics of the bios, of life. We consider art as a form of resistance against forms of power and domination . . . so to make art is to make politics. To make street art is to choose to work in the streets and not in the galleries. This in itself is a political choice.”3 It is important to note that many artists in Tunisia whose work takes on an activist role appear to acknowledge the potential difficulties inherent in using a medium which may be seen as elitist and limited as a vehicle for political activism. As Tripp explains, “In seeking to address and inform the public, they [artists] have to acknowledge that a lack of familiarity with the forms of artistic expression may be a barrier to comprehension. This is a familiar tension, witnessed in other countries where artists intend public engagement, striving to illuminate disguised forms of inequality, but where their art may itself be the product of privileged access to educational and cultural resources.”4 Tripp cites the work of several artists whose practice he sees as explicitly addressing this inequality of access and understanding, such as Sélim Tlili who as early as January 2011 initiated a project in which the public was invited to participate in the creation of a large portrait of Mohamed Bouazizi. Others, such as Faten Romissi, Bahri Ben Yahmed, and Selim Ben Cheikh developed projects that took their art into the marginalized neighborhoods of Tunis and rural villages in Tunisia in an effort to engage the full spectrum of the Tunisian population in the use of art as a means of social and political self-expression. Siobhán Shilton in her article on art and revolution in Tunisia notes that external perspectives, or accounts, of contemporary Tunisia have either “assimilate[d] ‘Tunisia’ within a teleological narrative of ‘progress’ towards democracy or to communicate a fear that they former autocratic regime will be replaced by an Islamist state.”5 This paradoxical and dichotomous representation is also reflected in Western interpretations of contemporary public art, particularly street art, in Tunisia. By this I mean that the work is either explicitly linked to a revolutionary agenda that is intended to counter that fear of an incipient Islamist takeover of the country or it is presented as a means to invigorate the Tunisian tourist economy and to situate the country within an international street art scene—in other words, to serve as a marker of progress which, through the public nature of street art, is necessarily constructed as democratic progress. Shilton, however, resists this tendency, positing instead “an alternative ‘aesthetic

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of resistance’ with which to communicate the complexity and diversity of Tunisia.”6 This aesthetic may be seen through the lens of postcolonial visual art, which Shilton, drawing on the work of theorists such as Jean Fisher and Édouard Glissant, identifies as demanding a “third way” of both experiencing and interpreting visual art that “renders visible—or at least perceptible—the invisible through an alternative aesthetic of ambivalence, instability, provisionality and contingency.”7 That is to say, the art of contemporary Tunisia, including, I will argue, its street art, can be seen to operate within a postcolonial context that both visualizes and interrogates concepts of revolution, instability, and otherness. As Shilton explains, a unifying feature of postcolonial Tunisian artwork responding to the revolution is the “forging of an alternative ‘language,’ which specifically counters the mutually transparent, translatable visual languages in which icons or symbols of political singularity and reductive unification are produced and reified.”8 This “alternative language” finds its expression in Tunisian street art inasmuch as it is present in the sculptural, video, and photographic works that Shilton analyzes as well as in recent music, theatre, and dance produced in the country. As emphasized throughout this book, the public spaces of Middle East cities and towns provided both the physical platform and the rhetorical framework for the revolutions of the Arab Spring. The public square as site of protest and free dialogue was embraced by activists as the quintessential symbol of democratic, or at least populist, agency at the same time that such spaces provided a functional environment in which people could gather, gain, at least, some safety in numbers, and demonstrate against dictatorial and authoritarian regimes. Tunisia, of course, was no different in this respect and the public spaces in which the revolution played out in Tunis were primarily Casbah Square and Avenue Bourguiba. Noureddine Miladi, in his article on the role of city squares and graffiti as sites of resistance and communication, argues that in Tunisia these specific public spaces have remained in public consciousness in the years since the revolution as both symbols of political activism and as practical and “indispensable arenas of physical public engagement.”9 The use of the term “public engagement” is interesting in that it suggests a two-way interaction between the protagonists of an event (in this case, political activists) and a less-involved, but perhaps no-less-invested, general public. Put in artistic terms, this might be described as the relation between artist and spectator, or actor and audience—while one assumes the active role in creative production, both participants are required for a creative act to achieve its purpose. Street

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art is very much reliant on public engagement, indeed, to use Miladi’s words on “physical public engagement” to achieve its aims. To adapt a metaphor, if a work of street art is not seen (or not understood) by a public, does it make a sound?

Zoo Project: A revolutionary street artist in Tunis One of the most prolific and insightful street artists at work during and in response to the Jasmine Revolution was Bilal Berreni, who, under his street name Zoo Project, created murals as well as moveable cutout figures exploring, honoring, and critiquing various aspects of the revolution. Sadly, Berreni died in July 2013, leaving the question of how his work would have continued to develop in the years since the revolution unanswerable. Yet, his output in 2011 until his death is worth examining in some detail given both its ubiquity and visual power. Zoo Project was a French-Algerian artist based in Paris who traveled to Tunis during the spring of 2011 at the height of revolutionary activity. Already, in Paris, he had honed his approach to street art, peppering the city with largescale murals, generally in black and white with bold lines defining their figures. These murals were both political and wryly humorous, stylistic traits that he carried with him to Tunisia. Arriving in Tunis, he began to create cartoon-like, yet sophisticated, murals addressing the revolutionary themes of freedom of speech and expression, ousting the oppressive Ben Ali regime, and improving the rights of women and economic opportunities for Tunisians. Like Banksy, with whose works those by Zoo Project share a certain visual affinity in their spare, yet powerful, design, Zoo Project often makes clever use of the physical location of his murals to add to their effectiveness or to reinforce a visual pun. In one mural, the simple figure of a man sweeping the letters “RCD” out of his way is amplified by its placement at the corner of a decaying building. RCD is the acronym for the Democratic Constitutional Rally party, led by President Ben Ali prior to his ouster on January 14, 2011. The party itself was disbanded just weeks after Ben Ali fled the country; however, Zoo Project’s painting hints at the inability of Tunisians to fully shake the memory of its repressive power and of their concerns about a return to such an autocratic regime. Rather than making a clean sweep, so to speak, of the RCD, Zoo Project’s figure can only push the letters into a corner, perhaps leaving them to gather dust but, nonetheless, be present at the margins of the new political order Tunisian revolutionaries sought to achieve.

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Figure 26 Zoo Project, Mural, Tunis, Tunisia. Photo credit: By SupapleX (CC BY 3.0 [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0]), from Wikimedia Commons.

In a second piece, Zoo Project portrays a man quite literally sowing the seeds of revolution; when the seeds germinate they sprout not plants, but fists raised in the universal symbol of revolution, of speaking truth to power. Yet the gardener himself does not appear at all powerful. Barefoot, dressed in simple clothing, he wears a bandana over his mouth and clutches his bag of seeds. The inclusion of the bandana draws a visual parallel with images of protestors wearing similar face coverings to protect themselves from tear gas; the mural suggests, perhaps, that nurturing a revolutionary future requires sacrifice and the experience of hardship on the part of those who begin the fight. An exuberant and dynamic mural shows what can only be described as a pile of people teetering on a bicycle, following a sign that points toward “Freedom.” The figures are all young people, though of different genders and, perhaps, ethnicities. Interestingly, given the complicated space occupied by women

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during the Arab Spring protests throughout the region, the bicycle is driven by a female figure. Another figure, also a woman, holds a sign proclaiming “Vive le peuple.” Whereas “freedom” is written in both English and Arabic, this second slogan is presented only in French. While it may be reading too much into the image to suggest that this linguistic separation carries any particular meaning or subtext, the presence of the three languages does serve to highlight the complexity of Tunisian society and history and the layering of cultures the country has experienced. The mural also includes a figure trailing behind the main group, his hand grasped by a man sitting backward on the bicycle. In a horizontal position, looking almost like a flag or banner streaming behind the bicycle, this figure may represent those who have been slower to embrace the path of revolution or who, through social or economic status, are in danger of being left out of the revolution’s achievements. Interestingly, in some reproductions of this mural (e.g., in a photo essay in the British newspaper Guardian) this figure is cropped out. It is unlikely that such cropping is done with any particular symbolic intent; however, the way in which a mural is presented can alter the impact and understanding of street art. Of course, something similar happens when any work of art is cropped or even photographed from a particular angle, but the documentary nature of most photographs of street art, particularly of revolutionary street art, encourages the viewer of such reproductions to see them within a genre of reportage that carries an assumption of truth. Likewise, reproductions of street art in newspapers, magazines, and online media rarely give a sense of the wider spaces in which the works are situated; looking at most such photographs one would assume that every work of revolutionary street art is painted on a virtually identical, neutral wall whether in Tunis, Cairo, or Manama. Yet, placement is extremely important to audience reaction and interpretation. To continue with the example of Zoo Project, the fact that the sign pointing toward “freedom” and the crowded bicycle following its lead is headed in the direction of a dilapidated, small, and nondescript Tunisian street rather than toward a bright, shiny, urban landscape may suggest something of the fragility of this revolution and of uncertainty about its long-term prospects. In addition to his many murals painted around Tunis, Zoo Project was also responsible for the creation of forty cutout portraits of some of the 236 martyrs killed during the revolution. These portraits, like his murals, are painted in black and white with Zoo Project’s signature heavy lines and expressive shading. While the portraits in and of themselves are compelling testimonies to the human cost of the Tunisian revolution, it is their activation within the

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public spaces of Tunis that gives these works of street art their particular visual and symbolic power. The figures appeared, singularly and in groups, in spaces as diverse as a demonstration in front of the Theatre Municipal on Avenue Bourguiba; in the medina, or old city, of Tunis; in storefronts and lining nondescript avenues and alleys in neighborhoods around the city. At times, the figures remained static, posed against walls, gates, or windows; on other occasions, they were carried, marched with, or used as photographic props. In the latter instances, they became active tools of audience engagement and through their movement served to keep the memories of the martyrs both visually and tactically present. In keeping with the important role that performative media such as music, theatre, and dance played in the Tunisian revolution, Zoo Protest’s martyrs series showed that street art, too, presents opportunities for activating the spaces of revolution in a physical as well as aesthetic dimension Zoo Project’s last work in Tunisia in 2011 took him to a refugee camp on the border with Libya, where he produced life-sized canvas portraits of the refugees. While perhaps not strictly considered street art, or at least not adhering to standard understandings of the term, these portraits can be seen as the most appropriate form of street art for their setting. A refugee camp is an even more ephemeral public space than that of the street, even more than the streets of the Middle East during the Arab Spring. People are constantly moving in, out, and around the camp and the very nature of its structures— tents—suggests impermanence. While spaces for “traditional” graffiti and street art are available within most camps, Zoo Project’s use of canvas as his medium for mobile portraits of the camp’s inhabitants seems more appropriate to the setting than the co-optation of the walls of the few permanent structures for the production of murals. Further, the individual portraits, again executed in Zoo Project’s signature illustrative style, could be carried and preserved by the refugees themselves; like the martyrs’ portraits, these became not just static personal and political symbols but active, performative elements within the social milieu of the camp. Through his work in the camp, Zoo Project offered its residents a means of expression of personal identity and reclamation of humanity that is one of the first things lost when someone is displaced from their home. By creating portable portraits, Zoo Project reacts against that dislocation and offers a way in which refugees can recognize themselves and each other as individuals even in a collectively demoralizing and dehumanizing environment.

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Figure 27 Zoo Project, Refugee portrait project in Camp Choucha, Tunisia. Photo credit: http://www.zoo-project.com.

SK-One and Meen-One In stark contrast to the politically aware and socially engaged work of Zoo Project stands that of established Tunisian street artists SK-One and Meen-One. Both artists were known for their works before the revolution; they had been painting on the streets since the 1990s and SK-One organized the first gallery show of graffiti art in Tunisia, Urban Escape, in 2009, at the Artyshow gallery in the La Marsa neighborhood of Tunis. SK-One (Hafedh Khediri) has a greater international presence than Meen-One (Mouin Gharbi) and has shown work in both the United States and Europe, including his participation in the exhibition Dégagements, la Tunisie, Un An Après (Oustings, Tunisia, One Year Later) at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris in the spring of 2012. Despite the exhibition’s sober title and stated aim of “echo[ing] the different directions explored by artists in this interval between the revolutionary or citizen act and the one in which artistic creation finds its space.”10 One of SK-One’s contributions to the exhibition was simply his tag, marginally altered by the inclusion of the word “degagements” [sic] at the lower left. A can of spray paint placed on the floor in

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front of the painting, surrounded by paint splatters, was perhaps intended as a second signature or perhaps to suggest the rapid and recent creation of the piece. Whatever the artist’s intention, it is difficult in the context of a serious exhibition considering the ways in which artists had responded to the Jasmine Revolution during the first year after its events, to find much of either artistic or symbolic value in a piece that evoked nothing so much as the throw-ups and pieces of 1970s New York graffiti. Revolutionary in that place and time, perhaps, but not a style or subject that lends a sense of gravitas or reflection to a critical moment in Tunisian and Middle Eastern contemporary politics. Although SK-One (with Meen-One) contributed a second work to the exhibition, a photograph of a mural they had actually painted during the revolution which had a more overtly political message, the style of that piece still reflected that of early, particularly US, graffiti and, as such, fails to offer an artistically innovative reflection on the events of 2011.11 It is telling that in an interview with the online arts publication Ibraaz Michket Krifa, the curator of the exhibition, does not reference SK-One’s contributions, preferring instead to focus on the work of those artists who more directly engage and critique the origins of the revolution, its expression, and its aftermath in their work.12 In Belgium, in 2013, SK-One collaborated with Meen-One, Belgian artist Dema-One, and others on a Street Art Day held in conjunction with the Sounds of Revolution Festival. In addition to workshops on street art, the artists produced a large mural showing a fist clutching a bouquet of flowers, framed against a red background, breaking through a wall. The words “Join the Revolution” appear at the bottom of the piece; interestingly, SK-One’s signature (tag) is the most prominently visible above the text. While in both subject and style this piece appears more politically and socially engaged than that produced in the previous year in Paris, it is difficult to know exactly to what revolutionary context the artists are referring—is this a political revolution or a music revolution (as suggested by the festival’s focus on alternative contemporary rock music)? Some street artists in Tunisia, such as SK-One and Meen-One, appear to view the Jasmine Revolution less as a catalyst for the production of critically relevant and socially active street art and more as a means to gain recognition and acceptance of the practice in light of the attention paid to revolutionary graffiti. As SK-One observes, “Up until the revolution graffiti had been limited to restricted circles of the underground scene. Moreover, people had a bad image of graffiti. They perceived what we do as vandalism rather than a type of art in itself.”13 With this statement, the artist appears to recognize the role of

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the revolution in raising the profile of a previously marginalized medium but stops short of suggesting that the profound changes brought by the protests of 2011 would influence street art in any way. Meen-One comes somewhat closer to acknowledging the synergistic relationship between the revolution and the production of street art when he states, “From now on, whoever speaks of freedom of expression speaks of street art. Under the dictatorship, we were in a glass cube. This glass cube has exploded and now we are sharing our art with the whole society.”14 However, he does neither suggest that such sharing might continue to influence social or political activism nor assume that the engagements will necessarily take place on the street—the gallery is seen as an equally viable and valid location for the dissemination of the work of street artists. In this respect, SK-One and Meen-One are similar to the many other street artists, in the Middle East and beyond, who are viewed by some as having sold out or lost their commitment to the original methods and goals of the production of street art. While this sense of selling out is a critical point of debate and disagreement in the international street art community, it assumes a particular poignancy and urgency in the Middle East, where the potential impact and effect of subversive street art is perhaps greater than in any other location at this moment.

Street art and tourism Visiting the locations discussed in this book was a fascinating, at times challenging, experience that never failed to produce unexpected discoveries. My visit to Tunisia, and especially to the island of Djerba, was perhaps the most unexpected of all. During the almost two years of on-the-ground research conducted for this book, I postponed a visit to Tunisia over and over again due to the ongoing security concerns. The reader might legitimately question why the security situation in Tunisia posed a greater concern than that in, say, Israel or Iran, and for that question I do not have a good answer. Nonetheless, postpone I did, until in the fall of 2017, shortly before submitting the manuscript, the nagging feeling that I needed to see the situation in Tunisia for myself finally got the better of me and I headed off for Tunis and Djerba. It was to be a short trip, one night in each location, just enough time to get a feel for the place and to take photographs. In Tunis, I stayed within the medina, the old city, which still houses a bustling souq as well as one of the oldest mosques in Tunisia. Making my way through the

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winding alleys of the souq, I eventually emerged at the entrance to the Avenue Bourguiba, a key site for protests during the Tunisian, or Jasmine, revolution of 2011. As might be expected in this former French colony, which still bears a strong French cultural influence, despite its majority Muslim population, the Avenue is a wide, tree-lined thoroughfare, lined with cafés, shops, and hotels. Some of the buildings retain a grand, European style, yet there are also modernist influences, both the glass facades of the International Style and the concrete of Brutalist architecture. Government and civic buildings also have their place on the Avenue, including the Municipal Theatre, on the steps of which protestors gathered. In front of the statue of the first president of Tunisia, Habib Bourguiba, there is now a bright red, steel sculpture reading “J’aime Tunis,” with “aime” rendered in the shape of a heart. These sculptures appear to be gaining in popularity in the Middle East, appearing also in the heart of downtown Beirut as well as in Bahrain among other locations. There is a certain irony in the appearance of a magnet for tourist photos in a central location of revolution and protest and one might ask who is the “I” proclaiming their love for the city. Is this declaration intended to validate a “new,” more democratic Tunis beloved by its people? Or is the sculpture directed at the desperately needed tourists who, it is hoped, will love the city enough to return or, at least, to praise it to others. There is, of course, no revolutionary street art left to be seen in the center of Tunis, just as in Cairo or Bahrain. There is some work present in the streets of the medina; however, what little I saw appears to be rather haphazardly placed and much is disintegrating along with the walls on which it is placed. So, I went in search of the Rue Lenine, where I had read that an open-air street art gallery had emerged.15 Rue Lenine is located just a few blocks from the Avenue Bourguiba; however, it has none of that street’s grace or charm, instead it appears, as do most streets off of the main thoroughfare, as little more than an alley, leading to no place of particular import. I walked down Rue Lenine looking for the street art and, just as I was beginning to wonder if it, too, had disappeared along with all signs of revolutionary street art, I saw on the corner a few paintings which then gave way to a longer wall painted with diverse murals, clearly the work of many different artists. The unprepossessing quality of the entrance to this “gallery” was further complicated by the presence of an armed guard who, while clearly not interested in keeping people away from the art, did little to encourage sustained viewing. A local resident directed me into a parking lot across from the wall I had originally noticed where several other works had been painted but could not be easily seen from the street. I was clearly one of few tourists who had gone

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Figure 28 Street art on Rue Lenine, Tunis, Tunisia. Photo credit: Author.

out of their way to visit this location, which did not appear to be featured on any guides to the city. Nor is there a thriving community surrounding the street; many of the neighboring buildings are stores, offices, or government buildings and there does not appear to be a large residential presence. All of this begs the question of who the work was produced for. This was a question that would emerge even more strongly on my visit to Djerba. The small Tunisian island of Djerba is a quiet place known for its beach resorts. Although a number of tourists pass through those resorts each year, few travel to any other destinations on the island, limiting the benefit that tourist spending brings to the community. In 2014, a project was initiated that might have changed this situation for the small town of Erriadh, a village previously known primarily for housing the oldest synagogue in Africa, but which became the subject of a new type of attention when it was developed as an open-air street art museum featuring works by 150 international artists. The project, called Djerbahood, was initiated by Mehdi Ben Cheikh, a French-Tunisian who is the founder of Galerie Itinerrance in Paris, a gallery focused on street art. According to Ben Cheikh, “What I would like to do is talk about the Arab world in a different way, a positive way” and the Djerbahood project helps to foster that conversation.16 The artists whose works are included in the project range from

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Figure 29 Street art in Djerba, Tunisia. Photo credit: Author.

the well-known to emerging talent. Some, such as the French-Tunisian artist eL Seed, whose calligraphic works have been shown throughout the Middle East, are familiar with the region; others came from locations as diverse as Europe, Central and South America, and the United States and adapted their usual styles to fit the architecture and character of Erriadh. Several residents of the village have cited the opportunity to meet and interact with artists from such diverse geographic and cultural backgrounds as a benefit of the project.17 The scope of the Djerbahood project is closer to that of an international art fair or biennial than to a typical exhibition of street art. The particular economic and cultural conditions of Erriadh contributed to the success of the project, as did high-level support from the Tunisian cultural authorities, but Ben Cheikh also needed to obtain financial support from private sources for the project, which did not generate any revenue from merchandising and which financially supported the participation of at least some of the artists. In this respect, Djerbahood was, in some regards, the beneficiary of the Banksy effect discussed previously in relation to street art in Palestine. Obtaining the level of support needed to realize a project on the scale of Djerbahood required an acceptance of street art as a legitimate means of artistic expression—not as graffiti or vandalism—that arguably did not exist before Banksy primed the international art community for

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the support of this genre. The support given by eL Seed to the project was also of great importance. In terms of critical acclaim and exhibition opportunities, eL Seed might be considered the Banksy of the MENA region. His work has been commissioned in his native Tunisia as well as in the UAE, Bahrain, and Cairo and beyond the Middle East in locations as diverse as Brazil and Paris. eL Seed credits the events of the 2011 Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia with opening the space for him and other street artists to create work in that country, despite the fact that graffiti is still officially considered a crime by the government. When the Djerbahood project was launched, it received positive reviews from the international press, including the New York Times. A selection of quotes from that article by Rooksana Hossenally gives a sense of the positive spin that was put on reactions to the project on the part of both artists and local residents. Muslims, Christians and Jews have lived here in peace for the last 2,000 years or so. I’m not here to aggravate anyone, but to consolidate this aspect, which I find beautiful, and together with the natural beauty of the village, provides the artists with a unique canvas. (Mehdi Ben Cheikh, project organizer) The village is beautiful and I think this project will encourage people to come and explore it. Foreigners will learn about Tunisian culture and for locals who have never left the island, it’s an opening onto the world. (eL Seed, participating artist) Art is important, it encourages us to stay open to others, to other cultures, and I am grateful to this project because it has allowed me to meet people from all over the world, to travel, and best of all, to open my mind. (Abdel Kader, local resident)

It is perhaps too cynical to suggest that this last quote from Mr. Kader might have been guided by the reporter, whose article in an international paper might be naturally biased toward a reading of the project in which international artists descend on a small rural village to impart a sense of cultural sophistication and diversity of expression. Yet, even if we accept that the words are those of Mr. Kader, they have been carefully selected to bolster that view of the project. After all, we could have heard more from Anis Tannich, who says, “It’s true that some inhabitants weren’t too happy about the artwork at first because it’s something they had never seen before,” offering an alternate narrative and interpretation. Even Tannich, however, quickly adds, “But most are now overjoyed. .  .  . It’s something we can be proud of.”18 What, one wonders, is it exactly that the residents of Erriadh can claim pride in? To my knowledge, they were not

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engaged as participants in the creation of the artworks nor, in the majority of cases, involved in their design. Is the pride to be taken in the new role of the village as international art destination? If so, it is fair to say that these residents may have been oversold in estimations of the extent to which the Djerbahood project will actually serve as a catalyst for tourism. Even if the tourists who visit the island’s resorts do take the time to travel to the open-air museum, it is likely to be a brief trip that will not produce substantial or sustained revenue for the village. And what of eL Seed’s claim that “foreigners will learn about Tunisian culture [from the works]”? The subject matter of the works is not focused on any noticeably Tunisian themes and it is unclear whether the artists involved made any attempt themselves to learn about that culture—if they had, that knowledge is not reflected in their work. If not the works of street art, is the visit to the village itself supposed to provide the cultural context and background? If so, there would need to be investment and a defined strategy to provide a cultural heritage component to any visit to Erriadh in order to counteract the more likely scenario of tourists wandering aimlessly around the streets, cameras at the ready, perhaps attempting to identify the works painted by the best-known artists. News media accounts of the creation and reception of Djerbahood are decidedly amplified by Ben Cheikh’s own description of the project as articulated in the extensive catalog published in 2015.19 Whereas the media typically portrays the creation of the open-air street art museum as a tourist attraction, which, indeed, it is and which Ben Cheikh acknowledges and welcomes, the organizer is able to provide a more nuanced account of Djerbahood’s inception and realization than those offered elsewhere. Ben Cheikh clearly situates the project in the context of the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring more generally; his comments are worth quoting at some length: To choose Tunisia [for the project] was to demonstrate that this country has the capacity to generate experiences that are innovative and unconventional in relation to the creative strategies practised locally. The Tunisian revolution was still in progress—and paradoxically enabled the whole population to speak out, evoking the possibility of a different future. Bringing in artists from all over the world just before the elections was already a way of participating in the cultural awakening of the country as a whole. . . . But furthermore, the fact that the whole planet should come to express itself artistically in Tunisia, at a time when some extremist parties are preaching obscurantist doctrines to drag the country towards isolation, has political overtones: it participates in the fight for freethinking and progress.20

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Street art in Tunisia and, indeed, in many countries in the Middle East can be loosely categorized into two styles. One might be described as more American, in the tradition of New York and Los Angeles taggers of the 1970s and 1980s— whose works featured bright colors, balloon-like letters and/or figures with an emphasis on the qualities of the spray paint techniques and materials used in the creation of the pieces. The other style, while more aesthetically diverse, could be described as illustrative or calligraphic (or, at times, a combination of the two). Artists working in this vein often do not rely on spray paint as their medium or, when they do use it, minimize the signature elements of the medium and instead emphasize a more painterly aspect of the work. In addition to a wide variety of painted works, most wheatpaste street art in the Middle East falls into this latter category. Of the more than 200 individual works of street art included in the Djerbahood project, very few would fit into that first category of street are with a more traditional, American aesthetic. While the visual characteristics of the images produced by the artists working in the illustrative and calligraphic style are extremely diverse, the works share a certain visual sophistication and generally merge harmoniously with their environments rather than appearing as intrusions on the landscape and architecture of Erriadh. Such a harmonization is in keeping with Ben Cheikh’s selection of Erriadh for this project in large part because of its historic associations with the religions of both Judaism and Islam; the village houses one of the world’s oldest synagogues, the El Ghriba, in addition to its mosques. Ben Cheikh also appreciated the way in which the village appears frozen in time and yet, in his words, “has kept its soul, due to its long history.”21 As Ben Cheikh goes on to observe, “The traditional architecture, with arches, domes, arcades and small windows, endows the whole [of the village] with a quality of life combined with tranquility.”22 All of the artists working in the village maintained a great respect for that architecture; some made specific use of traditional forms, such as the dome, to complete certain visual elements in their work. Three years after the completion of the Djerbahood project, signs are not promising for the dream of drawing tourists to Erriadh to view the street art and stimulate the local economy. On my visit in 2017, I found many disintegrating murals, some whitewashed, some apparently intentionally damaged. A substantial number of the works were placed in an abandoned building site, undoubtedly tidied up for the occasion and now completely returned to its ruinous state. The beautifully crafted images on local domes are peeling, their paint a victim of the intense heat and sea air of the island. At my hotel, the concierge seemed shocked

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Figure 30 Street art in Djerba, Tunisia. Photo credit: Author.

that I was looking for the street art; in the sleepy town square, I attracted many curious looks as I wandered around with my camera. One enterprising young boy followed me around for a while on his bike and eventually offered a tour of the works, which I declined, preferring the experience of stumbling on the pieces unexpectedly in the twisting streets of Erriadh. The lost potential of the project is a poignant reminder that street art can only go so far in putting the troubled countries on the map as spots of cultural tourism.

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United Arab Emirates: Street Art as Cultural Capital

In a 2014 article, Rafael Schacter links the “domestication [and] neutralization” of street art to the “world-dominating gospel of the Creative City.”1 Schacter examines a number of cases in which street art is co-opted to fit the ambitions and creative agendas of city planners and to satisfy the aesthetic taste of the hipsters who populate so many of these creative cities. Two of these examples are particularly germane to a discussion of street art in the UAE. One is the role that street art festivals play in the neutralization and commodification of street art in urban centers and the second is the way in which Miami’s Wynwood Walls development has essentially created a permanent, and permanently problematic, street art festival with little regard for the neighborhood in which it has been developed or for the gritty, outlaw graffiti tradition that gives contemporary projects such as Wynwood Walls their “street cred.” The UAE, particularly Dubai, has in many ways embraced the creative city doctrine as a path to the future—a future in which oil revenues will shrink rapidly before disappearing altogether. Projects such as the Dubai Design District (D3) and Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island museum and cultural complex provide the most spectacular and outwardly visible signs of a valorization of creativity that flows through many projects and initiatives sponsored throughout the UAE. Unlike many other cities seeking to reinvent themselves as creative capitals, particularly those in Europe and the United States, cities in the UAE present effectively a blank slate on which to inscribe their particular construction of a creative economy and ethos. Quite literally, the spaces meant to house the creative city must be built from scratch, creative professionals must be brought in from abroad, and high-profile events, such as Art Dubai, must be launched to mirror those markers of creativity that are valued in older cities. No reclamation of nineteenth-century industrial warehouses or quaint medieval town squares is

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possible in the UAE. And no gritty urban tradition of graffiti, such as that which has marked and continues to mark urban capitals from New York to London and Berlin, exists to influence a new, gentrified, form of street art. Instead, to the extent that the UAE wish to embrace street art as a marker of contemporary creativity—and I argue that the desire to do so is strong—this urban art form must be imported in much the same way that other creative city elements are brought into the UAE. Building on the work of authors such as Richard Florida (2002), whose definitions of “creative cities” have shaped both urban planning and urban identity over the past fifteen years, Sarah Banet-Weiser uses the lens of convergence to examine the ways in which contemporary street art exemplifies a particular blend of authentic creativity with the commercial as a means of branding these creative cities.2 Banet-Weiser distinguishes street art as a twentyfirst-century manifestation of the engagement with public advertising and the assertion of commercial brands which was established during the years in which graffiti emerged as a form of public visual culture. Street art is thus part of a new “normativity of brand culture” in which “commercial culture poaches the ‘urban cool’ signifiers from street and graffiti artists as a way to attach this sentiment to products.”3 This poaching, however, is not unidirectional, as “street and graffiti artists’ creative productions and personal identities are in turn shaped by the conventions of commercial culture, especially in terms of brand logics and strategies.”4 While such convergence of creative and commercial culture might be initially read as mutually beneficial, Banet-Weiser argues that it represents not simply an “overlapping” of modes of cultural production but a complex interplay between these modes which relies for its efficacy on the “erasure of non-commercial public space.”5 As street artists become increasingly not only ambassadors for corporate brands but brands in and of themselves (Banksy, Shepard Fairey), urban space may no longer function as an unmediated public canvas for authentic creative expression, but is rather determined by the brand campaigns not only of specific corporate identities but of creative cities themselves. Banet-Weiser situates her analysis specifically within the cultural, commercial, and political context of the United States and on first examination her observations may seem unrelated to the Middle East, in which the role of street art is typically viewed as exclusively political rather than brand oriented. Yet, a look at cities such as Dubai, which as much as New York, Los Angeles, or Miami desires to be recognized for its creative industries, shows that street art is

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very much appropriated as an urban branding strategy within the Middle East. Even cities such as Beirut and Cairo, with their history and ongoing experience of political unrest, are attempting, at least in places, to re-purpose street art as a means of signifying a vibrant cultural and creative identity and the rise of artists such as Ganzeer and ASHEKMAN further emphasizes the convergence of authentic creativity (or authentic politics) and commercial culture. As BanetWeiser argues, Because the context for street art is the city, or the urban space and given that many urban cities are aggressively re-branding themselves as “creative,” through public-private partnerships, hiring marketers to “sell cities,” and creating quantitative matrices for measuring levels of creativity .  .  . the presence of creative visual representation in city spaces that so often signals the “urban” can be understood as a way to parse out particular convergences.6

A significant contributor to the effectiveness of street art as a means of branding, or contributing to the brand culture of contemporary cities, is the ability of street artists to create and promote their individual brands. While for a small subset of artists, notably Banksy, this individual brand is based on anonymity, for many more well-known street artists, their identity is merely encoded, not concealed, by their street names. Their marketing savvy, however, through social media as well as mainstream commercial art spaces, allows their rapid identification as a means of commissioning their services or selling their works. Within the context of the Middle East the combination of self-branding with the privileging of authenticity—not only creative but also political and social authenticity—becomes a particularly crucial element in understanding the multivalent dimensions of contemporary street art. I quote here at length from Banet-Weiser, whose articulation of this relationship and its inherent tensions provides a concise summary of the situation: The entrepreneurialism and innovation of the [street] artist, previously understood and practiced as a cultural or political practice (one that is only economic out of necessity), is situated with an enterprising cultural context, one in which artistic endeavours can be seen as particular kinds of “freedoms” in the marketing or branding of the self. . . . Street artists brand themselves through their art, personal logos, social media and websites, among others, as a way to enter into a circuit of commodity exchange. To think of street artists as enterprising individuals—as self-brands—forces us to think more deeply about how, and in what ways, the relationship between the market and the individual works: the

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contemporary cultural economy authorizes particular individuals (such as street artists) to be entrepreneurs, and particular creative productions (such as street art) as brands. This form of convergence is a relationship of struggle, necessity and mutual benefit.7

Like Banet-Weiser, Rafael Schacter finds the rise of the creative city instrumental to what he describes as “the domestication, the neutralization of Street Art . . . an almost total complicity with a globally domineering cultural policy in which the arts are reduced to a mere instrumental cog in the ‘creative,’ ‘regenerative’ wheel.”8 For Schacter, the creative city offers a fertile ground for the migration of street art away from a subversive form of public, visual production (subversion now being associated with graffiti, rather than street art) to a superficial, commercially driven, tool for marketing cities. While street art performs this function in a variety of ways, Schacter is particularly concerned with the rise of the street art festival as a means of asserting the status of a city as a space of creative vibrancy, producing a cool factor that not only foregrounds the presence of a creative base but encourages other “creatives” to relocate to the city. Schacter uses the particularly stark example of the Art BGC NextAct ONE Festival that took place in Manila in May 2015 to demonstrate the problematic nature of such festivals. The ONE Festival, which featured the production of murals by internationally famous street artists, took place in Manila’s Bonifacio Global City, a privately administered, gated community within the city of Manila. The BGC is tightly controlled and guarded, with public activities equally monitored. As such, the ONE Festival could never serve as the kind of public venue which street art arguably demands to fulfill its intended function. “It is Street Art without a street (if the street is a space of commonality). It is public art without a public (if the public is a space of plurality).”9 The intended viewers of the street art in BGC were members of the privileged class who had the right to occupy this private space; that the works may have been seen in passing by the lower-class maids, nannies, gardeners, and others who keep the city functioning was tangential to its purpose. This was not art created for the public of Manila, nor for its streets. For Schachter, it is not only the co-optation of public space by the anodyne works of street art produced by street art festivals and through murals commissioned in the service of marketing creative cities that is distressing. It is also, perhaps most painfully, that street artists themselves have become complicit in these activities, perhaps to the point that they no longer even acknowledge the complications and contradictions inherent in their participation in such projects

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and events. A passionate explanation from Schacter brings home the intense unease he feels in the face of this complicity. So many of these artists from within the practice [of street art] have themselves seem to acquiesce to this neo-liberal narrative so uniformly—so uniformly that even ambivalence is hard to find. . . . And if this art chooses (as it has) to enter into the institutional realm, Street Art, Street Artists, can no longer cling to their supposedly outsider status, cling to claims of a (purposeful) naivety, a conscious exteriority. It is no longer art brut. It is no longer raw. Lack of awareness cannot, therefore, be an excuse. Ignorance of the situational specifics of this (supposedly) site-specific art simply converts the artists’ primary exploitation (by institutions and corporations) into a secondary complicity (through the dearth of any critical discourse or reflection). It transfigures passive manipulation into active collusion. And it, they, can no longer stake a claim to anything but total domestication, without coming to take a more purposeful, a more critical stance.10

This passage serves not primarily as a lament for the homogenized appearance of street art—indeed, visual style is not explicitly referenced—but as a condemnation of the passivity of contemporary street artists who turn a blind eye to the social and cultural context of their artistic production. Schacter expects, at a minimum, “ambivalence” on the part of these artists—an ambivalence that I take to be a critical reflection on the limitations and constraints placed on their work when it is used as a marketing and branding tool for a particular creative city and, by extension, creative class. If we take the origins of contemporary street art to lie with the graffiti subculture that emerged in New York in the 1970s, it can be argued that the genre, as currently practiced through events such as the street art festival, has lost its connections to that subversive origin. Further, if we look at the demographic of those early graffiti artists, largely poor youth of color from marginalized neighborhoods, we see precisely the demographic that is ignored, if not displaced, by current street art projects. Schacter’s injunction to street artists to at least turn a critical eye to their practice and its context is thus justified.

“Wynwood Goes Dubai” The Wynwood Walls complex in Miami, established in 2009 by the extremely successful property developer Tony Goldman, is a prime example of the successful use of street art as a driver of commercial as well as cultural activity.

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The warehouse complex, which mixes high-end bars and restaurants with commissioned street art from international artists, is located just blocks from the heart of Art Basel Miami and epitomizes the nexus between street art, the global art scene, and commerce. The rhetoric and propaganda that have accompanied Wynwood Walls’ self-presentation and that have characterized its reception by most visitors and commentators present an image of the project as a force for revitalization of a neighborhood. Goldman himself is characterized in the creation story of Wynwood Walls as a “renowned community revitalizer and placemaker” and his description of the inspiration for Wynwood Walls is quoted as “Wynwood’s large stock of warehouse buildings, all with no windows, would be my giant canvases to bring to them the greatest street art ever seen in one place.”11 One might, as Schacter has, question whom Goldman is referring to as “them.” If the reference is to the existing Puerto Rican community in the neighborhood, Schacter persuasively argues that “they” were neither desirous for nor in need of a neighborhood revitalization through street art. He writes: What appeared as a blank canvas for developers, a vacant space awaiting their settlement was in fact a home for thousands of people, people with histories and attachments, yet people with no rights to their own land. The art of Wynwood can thus be seen not only as an explicitly synthetic one . . . but can be understood as a practice of pure colonization: artists arrive (at the behest of capital), ignorant of local circumstances (and too apathetic to enquire), and create the vibrant veneer disguising the existence of an indigenous community.12

Thus, Wynwood Walls is established as a paradigmatic example of not only the commercially driven street art festival but also the problematic ways in which street art can function precisely in opposition to its roots in graffiti culture, obscuring and even obliterating existing neighborhoods and cultures, rather than rising from and reflecting the local streets and the people who inhabit them. Wynwood Walls provided inspiration for at least part of the development of street art as a commercially and publicly valued art form in Dubai. Street Art Gallery, opened in Dubai in 2013, is self-described as “Dedicated to Street Art . . . the only Gallery in Dubai to offer wide selection of great Artists from USA, Europe and Middle East”(streetartdubai.ae). The gallery not only offers works for sale online and from its physical location but also provides collaboration and consultation services for interior designers as well as restaurant and retail spaces. In 2014 the gallery mounted “Wynwood Goes Dubai,” a show that largely featured work by artists who had pieces in the Wynwood complex. In this way, the gallery used the Wynwood brand to promote a vision of Dubai as a regional,

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if not international, destination for street art tourism and was a clear bid for global recognition and authenticity for Dubai as an emerging street art hub. Schacter’s characterization of Wynwood Walls as a “synthetic” and insular venue for the much-hyped creative energy of street art, which I support, might, ironically, make it the perfect model for the street art scene in Dubai. Dubai itself is frequently described as artificial, constructed in record time from what was as recently as the early 1970s a blank canvas of desert. There are no neighborhoods in need of revitalization in Dubai, unless one considers those occupied largely by expatriate laborers and low-wage workers. However, they are not the primary target of those promoting street art in Dubai, and throughout the UAE. Rather, the genre appears to be used in ways that closely echo Schacter’s description of street art as a tool for the creative city—a means by which the contemporary urban landscape is marked as trendy and authentic while at the same time participating in a closed loop of global artistic exchange within constrained boundaries of acceptable street art practice. The remainder of this chapter will explore some of the specific artists and projects defining current street art in the UAE.

eL Seed and street art as social and commercial practice In the context of the Middle East, perhaps no street artist is better known than eL Seed, the French-Tunisian artist who has made a name for himself painting his massive calligraffiti murals in public spaces from the UAE to South Africa. eL Seed frequently paints in neglected and impoverished areas, yet his fame problematizes what might be initially viewed as the kind of critical stance on the part of street artists advocated by Schachter. Let me state at the outset that I do not impugn, nor yet know, eL Seed’s motives in creating these artworks. Likely, he intends to provide a beautiful and culturally relevant painting that can be enjoyed by residents for years. No matter how altruistic his aims, however, it is a consequence of eL Seed’s notoriety that his projects invite attention from the international press, particularly the art and design press. That attention shines a brief light on the community in which eL Seed is working: communities that generally could benefit from sustained local and international humanitarian intervention rather than from fleeting acknowledgment. eL Seed’s interventions are, in this respect, not dissimilar from Banksy’s works in Gaza and Palestine although, particularly in the case of Palestine, the British artist has demonstrated

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an ongoing commitment to the area that is not yet apparent in eL Seed’s practice. Moreover, while eL Seed’s murals incorporate text that is relevant to the local context, his calligraffiti style renders the language opaque, generally even to Arabic speakers. While much street art produced in Dubai and Abu Dhabi is intentionally impermanent, the French-Tunisian “calligraffiti” artist eL Seed has made the most lasting marks on the Dubai landscape as well as in neighboring Sharjah. His colorful, almost abstract renderings of Arabic script are well-suited to the culture and landscape of the Middle East and have been well-received in the UAE. eL Seed has risen substantially in popularity over the past years, working around the globe in cosmopolitan areas such as Paris as well as in conflict zones such as Tunisia. Although eL Seed was raised in France, there is still as sense that he “belongs” to the Middle East and that feeling of connection may also contribute to his enduring popularity and many return visits to the UAE.

Figure 31 eL Seed, Mural on Bank Street, Sharjah, UAE. Photo credit: Author.

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In 2014 eL Seed completed a yearlong residency at Tashkeel, a contemporary art organization in Dubai that runs a program of exhibitions, workshops, internships, and various artist projects and residencies.13 At the end of his residency, eL Seed mounted a solo exhibition titled Declaration at the Tashkeel gallery space. Featuring large-scale sculptural versions of his trademark calligraffiti forms, the show was the outcome of many months of work with specialists such as a 3-D fabricator and an exhibition designer, and the work represented a new direction for eL Seed—one which, nonetheless, retained strong ties to his two-dimensional calligraffiti.14 As with many of his works, the text for these calligraffiti sculptures is taken from a poem—in this case, a romantic work by the Syrian poet Nazir Qabbani.15 According to eL Seed, the new material direction of the work was intended to help him move beyond the label of “Arab street artist” and to push his art in a new direction.16 Nonetheless, his sculptures retain many of the elements that so indelibly characterize his wall work—bright color, sweeping forms—encouraging rather than discouraging comparisons to that style. Despite the new turn in his work shown in the Tashkeel exhibition, eL Seed is still primarily identified and recognized as a street artist, and it is perhaps no surprise that his return to the UAE in early 2015 was to complete a commission for a mural in downtown Sharjah, just a few miles from the heart of Dubai. Sharjah has not experienced the same frantic pace of urban development seen in Dubai and has retained many of its building from the 1970s and 1980s. eL Seed’s piece was created on the wall of one of the historic Sharjah Bank Street buildings, a group of residential and commercial structures built in the 1980s and currently overlooking Sharjah’s Heritage District, including the recently restored Al Hisn fort. These typically modernist mid-rise structures feature tan facades with recessed balconies that read as a concrete grid on the surface of the buildings. eL Seed used the entire space of the façade for a sinuous mural in his signature colors of red, orange, and bright pink. Again, the calligraffiti includes the words of a poem, in this instance from the Iraqi poet Ahmed Bu Sneeda who lived and worked in Sharjah for much of his life.17 By incorporating the words of a former Sharjah resident into his work, eL Seed reifies a connection between the people of the city, particularly its Emirati residents, and the public art he produces. This is a strategy he has used in other locations, such as Brazil and Tunisia, and in Sharjah it seems to mark an intentional bid for the longevity of the work. The creation of the mural was sponsored by the Sharjah-based Maraya Art Centre, a nonprofit creative space offering exhibitions, workshops, and other public programs which also maintains an Art Park to showcase contemporary

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installation art and works of sculpture.18 eL Seed’s work was intended as the first installation in a public art project called Jedariya (Arabic for “walls”). Jedariya was established with the aim of using street art to connect the people of Sharjah, especially the youth population, to the city. In the words of Maraya Art Centre director Giuseppe Moscatello, “It [street art] is a wonderful way to not only add beauty to the everyday but to create a dialogue between the man on the street and the world of art and we look forward to engaging the community and especially the youth in this ongoing project.”19 Beyond community engagement, however, the prospect of street art as a commercial and touristic draw hovers. His Excellency Marwan Al Sarkal, chief executive of Sharjah Investment and Development Authority, expressed the hope that “by bringing world-class art projects into our beautiful emirate’s public areas we want to not only foster an appreciation of the arts among all, but also to attract artists and art lovers from Sharjah, the UAE, and all over the world.”20 In 2013, eL Seed became the first street artist from the Middle East to be featured as part of the Louis Vuitton “Foulards d’Artistes” project, in which international street artists were commissioned to create designs for scarves. In addition to the scarf design, eL Seed also painted three trunks, which were displayed in the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai during the launch of the collection and later auctioned for charity. The text chosen by the artist for his calligraffiti on both scarves and trunks was from a poem by Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali titled “Venice Carnival.” The layers of meaning embedded in this project are quite complex. A French fashion house celebrates its collaboration with a Middle Eastern artist; that artist, however, was actually born and grew up in Paris and chooses a poem connected to Europe as the theme for his design. That the poet himself, Taha Muhammad Ali, was a Palestinian, who lived in one of the most troubled and isolated areas of the Middle East, adds another layer of irony. The scarves, trunks, and their artist travel freely and are showcased in one of the most spectacular malls in Dubai; the poet fled his home and returned to a devastated land where he made his living selling tourist trinkets in the Israeli town of Nazareth. Moreover, the actual text written on the scarves and trunks is so abstracted as to be indecipherable, even to Arabic speakers. Thus, the meaning of eL Seed’s choice of poem is accessible only through descriptions and interpretations of the gesture, by the artist and others. In an interview with the online magazine Fluoro the artist stated, “I expressed the values of tolerance, acceptance, and unity with a visual revival of the poem Venice Carnival recounted by Taha Muhammad Ali. By using this poem, I wanted to pay homage to the city of Venice. I take great pride in being the first Arab artist to design a product for

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Louis Vuitton.” As described by the interviewer, “eL Seed used a fairly unknown part of the history of Venice to prove this point while working on the project. The artist explained that in the 12th century the Pope forbid the city of Venice from trading with the Arabs, yet the Venetians refused and went against the ruling power by continuing trade with the Arabs.”21 The problem with this construction of eL Seed’s contribution to the Louis Vuitton project as celebrating Christian tolerance, if not their embrace, of Muslims is that it is most certainly incorrect. Ongoing Venetian trade with Muslim nations during the many periods in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when such commerce was forbidden by the papacy, is far from a “fairly unknown” part of Venetian history. Nor, yet, does the rosy light in which eL Seed casts this continuation of trade bear significant scrutiny; it is well documented in both historical and modern sources that the Venetian sense of mercantile pragmatism, rather than any particular commitment to tolerance, much less unity, was the driving force behind uninterrupted trade with the East. As the noted historian of Venice, John Julius Norwich, writes, “It mattered little, if at all, to them whether their trading partners were Christian or Muslim so long as goods were delivered at the right prices and bills paid on time.”22 When a Western commentator writing of eL Seed’s work describes Ali’s poem as “celebrat[ing] a period of real tolerance that took place long ago between the People of the Book (i.e., Muslims, Jews, and Christians) in Venice, Italy,”23 an element of pure historical fantasy is introduced. The critic goes on to say that this period of tolerance was “something the poet who lived under occupation in Nazareth for most of his life, dreamed of but never saw before he passed away in 2011.”24 As a young man, Taha Muhammad Ali and his family were forced to flee to Lebanon when their village, Saffuriyya, was bombed and destroyed by Israeli Defense Forces during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. One of his bestknown and most moving poems is titled “Revenge” and opens with a searing and anguished stanza recounting the poet’s desire to “meet in a duel the man who killed my father and razed our home, expelling me into a narrow country.” While the poem resolves itself through the poet’s decision to ignore, rather than kill, this man, the agony expressed in its opening lines seems hardly evocative of a desire for reconciliation and this anger is present in other of Ali’s poems as well.25 Thus, eL Seed’s project co-opts in extremely problematic ways the work of another artist whose creative motives were very different, perhaps even diametrically opposed to those of the street artist. That this co-optation is done within the context of high-end fashion design and commerce, while the poet himself lived in relative poverty and obscurity as a Palestinian exiled in his own

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land raises serious questions not only about the validity of commodification of street art but about the ways in which one Middle Eastern artist interprets the work of another and then presents that work to a Western audience through his own, arguably corrupted, lens.

Ben Eine and the British Council As in other Gulf countries, notably Bahrain, the British Council in the UAE sometimes serves as the sponsor for street art projects, most recently in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. In March 2015, the Council commissioned the British street artist Ben Eine, perhaps best known for having one of his works presented to former US president Barack Obama by former British prime minister David Cameron, to paint a forty-meter-long mural on the outer wall of the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi. Eine is known for work that incorporates a blocky typographic style and it was this signature format that he employed to write “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” on the wall. The work was unveiled with great fanfare as Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Culture, Youth and Community Development, added his own spray-painted signature to the work. The Sheikh expressed his hope that the work would inspire creative expression by other young artists, a sentiment that was echoed by Marc Jessel, the British Council country director. Speaking of the goals for the project, Jessel stated “Apart from presenting a lovely piece of art, we are hoping to introduce urban art to the UAE. We also want to break the stigma about graffiti and show that it is acceptable to the mainstream art community in the UAE.”26 Following his successful installation of the Abu Dhabi mural, Eine moved on to Dubai where, in addition to mounting a solo show at the Artspace Dubai gallery, he painted a temporary wall at the Dubai Design District (D3) as part of the opening celebration for the massive complex intended to house a variety of design-related business and other creative enterprises. For the D3 wall, Eine chose the phrase “hand in hand” (also the title of his Artspace show) which was executed in his typeface of choice, the colorful and bold Circus. The event received attention from both local and international press, which tended to conflate the Abu Dhabi and Dubai mural projects, despite the fact that the Dubai mural was a temporary structure, dismantled after the three-day D3 opening event. In this context, the use by journalists of terms such as “bespoke”27 to describe the D3 work seems to imbue it with a sense of gravity and longevity

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that does not match the actual fate of the piece. Instead, the use of such “posh” terms appears as an attempt to situate the work within the high-end design and fashion sensibility espoused by D3 itself.28 In this way, Eine’s work becomes part of the commodification of the UAE (and MENA) design community, of which D3 is a telling example. The D3 project, like so many in the UAE and unlike many urban design enclaves in other international destinations, “is not a story of urban-regeneration [but rather] a feat of conjuring something out of nothing.”29 As such, it needs to quickly present an image of credibility and hipness to the international design community and the deployment of well-known street artists seems to be a mechanism for accomplishing that. The UAE appears keen on repeat visits from successful street artists and Eine is no exception. After his spring 2015 projects in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the artist returned in November 2015 to paint a vertical mural on a wall at the Jumeirah Beach Residence in Dubai. JBR, as it is known locally, is a high-end complex of residential towers, shops, and restaurants and hotels located a block away from the beachfront at the opposite end of the city from D3. Whereas D3 is a sprawling campus, JBR is a dense, traffic-congested urban neighborhood, crowded with both residents and tourists. Eine’s mural is easy to miss; tucked away on the side of building it reads simply JBR Dubai, again rendered in the colorful Circus font. In an interview with the National newspaper at the time of this commission, Eine alludes to the low-key approach he is taking with his interventions in the Dubai landscape: “I don’t want to upset people. I want to open doors and pave the way for new artists to come over here and do the type of art I do, spreading a message with words and typography. That works well with UAE culture.”30 Eine’s remarks suggest that a figurative style might not be welcome in the UAE, perhaps reflecting on the traditional avoidance of figuration in much Islamic art. Yet, typography is not without its challenges, notably in the need to tread carefully in terms of what texts are selected for representation; “JBR Dubai” is inarguably a safe choice, however words such as “vandalism” or “revolution” used in London murals and limited edition prints would be unlikely to find approval in the more conservative culture of Dubai. Following over twenty years as an underground street artist, including several years in collaboration with Banksy, Eine has transformed himself into a commercial artist, with gallery works commanding sums well into five digits and partnerships with luxury goods manufacturers such as Louis Vuitton.31 In this respect, he may be an ideal fit for the urban culture of Dubai—just enough grit and street cred to merit the designation of street artist with a healthy dose of high-end commercialism to match the look and feel of this glamor-obsessed city.

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Dubai Canvas Festival In the shadow of Ben Eine’s mural on the Jumeirah Beach Residences, for two weeks in February 2016, the Walk at JBR hosted a 3-D street art event known as Dubai Canvas. The event, which ran for the first time in 2015, returned in 2017 with the addition of a substantial cash award for the best images. The festival has strong government and corporate backing as it is organized by Brand Dubai, the creative arm of the Government of Dubai Media Office, with the support of Dubai Properties, the developer managing the JBR complex.32 The Walk at JBR is an extensive pedestrian and mostly beachfront thoroughfare, almost two kilometers long, lined with retail and dining outlets and intended to provide an outdoor recreation area for tourists and local residents. According to the official website for the Walk, the site attracted over twelve million visitors in 2014,

Figure 32 Dubai Canvas Festival 2016, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author.

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making it one of the most popular attractions in Dubai.33 The temperate weather in February makes the month one of the best for outdoor activities, ensuring significant foot traffic for the over sixty artworks on view during the 2016 Dubai Canvas Festival. The official press information for the event highlights its intended role as a cultural landmark for the UAE: The Dubai Canvas Festival brings to life the vision of Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to transform Dubai into an open-air art museum. (Director General of the Government of Dubai Media Office Mona Al Marri) JBR is leading the region’s unconventional art scene, through bringing major art-focused events to this internationally touristic renowned destination. Hosting the Dubai Canvas Festival . . . is a testament to our efforts in supporting the leadership’s vision to turn Dubai into an outdoor art-gallery, contributing to the overall happiness of the visitors of our destinations, through enriching their lifestyle with innovative events. (Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Properties Asset Management Arm under Dubai Properties Group Arif Mubarak) The Dubai public will once again have an incredible opportunity to view and interact with the creations of some of the most celebrated street artists in the world. (Member of the Organizing Committee of the Dubai Canvas Festival Ayesha bin Kalli)34

And who are these “celebrated street artists”? Among those highlighted in media coverage of the event were Kurt Wenner, described as the inventor of 3D street art, Qi Xinghua who claims to be the first 3D painting artist in China and who holds four Guinness World Records for large-scale 3D paintings and Neil Harbisson, billed as the world’s first “cyborg artist.”35 Wenner began his 3D art career in Italy, following in the tradition of the so-called maddonari, itinerant sidewalk artists who sketched religious images, often of the Madonna, in towns throughout Italy.36 Wenner gained praise and eventually a measure of fame for his skilled work in this tradition; however, it would be difficult to fit his work in any history of street art as it is generally defined or described by chroniclers of the scene.37 In 2015, Wenner’s contributions to the Dubai Canvas Festival included images of UAE heritage motifs such as the abra (traditional boat) as well as contemporary icons such as the Burj al Arab. One of Xinghua’s recordbreaking murals, created in 2011 outside of a shopping mall in Guangzhou, China, uses a strategy popular with many of the artists included in the Dubai Canvas Festival: that of using a wall to extend the space of the painting vertically in order to heighten the illusionistic effect.

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The label “street artist” does not at all fit cyborg artist and activist Neil Harbisson whose works include musical compositions as well as paintings on canvas but not urban installations. For the 2016 Dubai Canvas Festival, Harbisson was commissioned to compose “a piece of music called ‘Colour Dubai Symphony’ in collaboration with local singers and musicians.”38 Harbisson’s cyborg status derives from the fact that he has an antenna implanted in his skull that is “connected to a chip that  translates colour into sound. [in the artist’s words] ‘It detects the light’s hue and converts it into a frequency I can hear as a note.’”39 Fascinating as this process and the associated artistic outcomes may be, it is unlikely that any true street artist or aficionado would recognize them as such. Why bend the rules so far in the inclusion of figures such Harbisson in a festival billed as highlighting internationally famous street artists? Why, indeed, even use that label for 3D street artwork that claims a very different lineage (if Wenner’s connection to the madonnari is accepted) than the tagging of subway trains in New York City in the 1970s that is generally associated with the early origins of what is popularly considered street art? By choosing to associate the Dubai Canvas Festival with the particular term “street art,” Dubai and its arts and culture leaders are attempting to reify a connection with the urban credibility of street art and its practitioners—no matter how uneasily the actual work of those practitioners may fit into the fabric of this Gulf city.

Street art as performance Part of the original identity and allure of street art was the anonymous, illegal, and invisible act of creating pieces. The original graffiti writers in cities such as New York were forced to work surreptitiously, often under cover of darkness, due to the illegal nature of their pieces, which enforced a need for anonymity. Escaping attention and eluding arrest were part of the culture of street artists; indeed, the tension between these artists and law enforcement, in some cases, created a bond, generally a brotherhood, between artists in a neighborhood. To create successful and elaborate street art was a mark of pride not only for the works’ artistic merit but also for the way in which it signified an ability to both court and escape danger. Sometimes this danger was physical as well as legal as the locations chosen by street artists were often difficult to access and even more difficult to paint in. Today, the production of street art has taken on a

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performative role; no longer confined to the shadows, street artists are instead commissioned to work “live” at events such as art fairs, exhibition openings, and festivals. Even artists whose commissions are not generally of such an ephemeral and performative nature are watched and recorded at work resulting in videos that appear online as a testament to the time and skill required to complete largescale works of street art. As such, street art can, at least at times, be considered as a type of performance art, a category that may have particular resonance in the context of the Middle East. The underground nature of street art has been eliminated in the UAE. Street art is performative; rarely, if ever, do you find examples of work created illicitly and the public presentation of the act of artistic creation is part of the marketing of street art as a vibrant public art form. Public participation, as well, is often part of the mix, as when dozens of artists as well as UAE residents collaborated to create the world’s longest graffiti wall in celebration of UAE National Day in December 2014.40 Private institutions as well have promoted street art as a live demonstration project, for example, with New York University Abu Dhabi hosted a live painting demonstration and workshop presented by five UAE street artists in December 2015. As has been noted above, however, the workshop produced only a temporary installation that was shown on the campus for one week.41 In January 2014, the nascent Al Quoz Beautification Project (also known as the Al Quoz Project) launched its first public event: Street Art Night. Al Quoz is an industrial district in Dubai, marked largely by its warehouses and apartment blocks housing laborers. Although it is also home to Al Serkal, one of two major gallery districts in the city, the overwhelming atmosphere of Al Quoz is one of gritty, urban industry. The Al Quoz Beautification Project was established to “take advantage of the diversity of cultures in Dubai, extracting their values, traditions, and experiences and capturing it [sic] through Public Art on the streets of Al Quoz.”42 In keeping with this aim, the central focus of Street Art Night was to gather local artists, both musicians and visual artists, to perform during the evening. These performances were not limited to the musicians; rather, substantial attention was paid to the visual artists who created impromptu works on wooden walls set up in the middle of a closed street. Although largely described as “street art,” the works were intentionally created on structures that would be dismantled at the end of the event and the paintings were subsequently sold with proceeds benefiting local charities. Although street artists, of course, produce work specifically for sale in galleries or other markets, the inherently

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Figure 33 Street Art Night, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author.

artificial structure for the production of saleable works actually on the street, as opposed to in the studio, calls into question the definition of these paintings as street art. Yes, street art can—some would argue should—be ephemeral, but that ephemerality is generally the result of unplanned interventions: tagging over by other artists, government eradication of an image, or destruction of the wall on which a work was painted. The intentionally ephemeral street art produced at Street Art Night as well as other public art events in Dubai seems a curious UAE strategy—street art can be deployed when desired but just as easily retracted when not. This retraction is an especially interesting choice for work developed in Al Quoz as the area could actually benefit from some permanent street art to enliven the dusty and often deserted streets. Indeed, the Al Quoz Beautification Project does state the aim of sponsoring or producing more permanent work in the area; however, to date that goal remains unrealized.43 The follow-up event to Street Night Art was a Latin Art Festival in 2015 that included, but did not focus on, live painting.44 The group appears to have gone largely dormant since that event, save for an active Facebook page which is used to promote other regional events and occasionally to share international street art projects.45 Why this emphasis on public performance of the creation of street art? Arguably, this approach limits, if not eliminates, the mystique of the genre and

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lessens its impact. Banksy’s rise to fame, for example, was occasioned not only by the aesthetic quality and sardonic commentary in his (or her) work but also by the unexpected placement of the pieces. Discovering a new Banksy became something of a treasure hunt, particularly during events such as the artist’s 2013 New York residency. In the UAE, however, there seems to be a desire to educate viewers about street art combined with a need to recuperate the form from its classic definition as “graffiti,” with all the negative connotations that label incurs. Words like “introduce,” “engage,” “interact,” and “educate” appear frequently in accounts of UAE street art projects to describe the community value of such endeavors. By opening up the act of creation to public view, the “stigma” of graffiti is meant to be replaced by an understanding of the artistic skill required to create works of street art and the ultimate aesthetic merit of the pieces. Despite the active gallery scene in the UAE, particularly in Dubai, and the many exhibitions presented by the Sharjah Art Foundation, those venues for viewing contemporary art are visited by a relatively small percentage of local residents and tourists. Public street art performances are seen as a way of bringing art—a particularly accessible form of art—to a broader range and number of people.

Dubai Walls Melbourne-based artist CDH, self-described as “exclusively engaged in noncommercial street practice” has discussed the increased emphasis on street art as a commodity that can be co-opted for commercial use, whether directly as a form of advertising or indirectly as the backdrop for public festivals that bring revenue to cities around the world: “Street art is commonly misconceived as a counter-culture but over the past decade it has been progressively co-opted by popular culture to become the most mainstream contemporary art practice.”46 Although the artist’s particular frame of reference is Australia, the observations made by CDH equally apply to other countries, including the UAE. CDH suggests a set of consequences of this co-optation of street art into mainstream culture, several of which are visible in the art produced in Dubai and throughout the UAE. First is the idea of street art demonstrating a populist iconography in which the most recognizable, one might even say lowbrow, motifs and imagery become the most acclaimed and popular. CDH cites the example of a much-loved image in Melbourne—The Joker, painted by Owen Dippie— concluding that despite attempts to attribute worthwhile cultural values to the mural (such as the memorialization of the actor Heath Ledger), in the end the

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piece functions as “just a facsimile of the poster of the highest grossing film for 2008.”47 Street art is not only itself a commodity, but can be used to represent, even fetishize, other commodities. In Dubai, some of the most popular street art can be found as part of the Dubai Walls project in the newly developed City Walk, a mixed-use complex featuring commercial and residential spaces in addition to an upscale hotel.48 The images displayed in City Walk, notably located in the commercial/retail section, sometimes incorporate stylized versions of popular cartoon characters or resemble comic book illustrations, a nod to the populist iconography identified by CDH. Among the many works by international street artists presented as part of Dubai Walls, the piece by renowned street artist Ron English stands out for its blending of high and low cultural motifs. English has created a mural with an overall composition based on Pablo Picasso’s famous 1937 painting Guernica. As a statement in opposition to the Spanish Civil War and, by extension, against war and fascism generally, Picasso’s masterpiece ranks as one of the most moving and politically significant artworks of the twentieth century. For viewers who recognize the compositional model, then, English’s use of modified, yet recognizable, cartoon characters from brands such as Disney and Cap’n Crunch cereal is jarring and even disturbing. The replacement of the agonized figures of Picasso’s painting with these bizarrely distorted images of popular culture and commercial exchange seems almost sacrilegious. The modified characters are themselves copyrighted by the artist, furthering the commercialization of the image which now functions as a mash-up not only between high and low art but between different layers of commercial ownership.49 English also incorporates the image of a camel, presumably as a nod to the local

Figure 34 Ron English, Mural for Dubai Walls, City Walk, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author.

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culture, which serves to further debase the image by catering to touristic notions of what the UAE is known for. This is not the first time that English has reworked Picasso’s painting, but the Dubai version appears to bear the least resemblance to the original in terms of the characters used, meaning that an astute viewer would have to have a strong familiarity with the original work to recognize the source material for this mural. That few visitors to City Walk are likely to recognize that Guernica is the model for the composition (this is not the crowd that is visiting the Louvre in Abu Dhabi) further complicates the situation in relation to the work’s effect as public art. Dubai Walls also features work from other established street artists such as Blek le Rat, D*Face, and Ben Eine, as well as introducing pieces by more emerging artists such as the duo ICY and SOT, originally from Iran and now working in Brooklyn, New York. The work produced by these artists is diverse and in terms of subject and composition few, if any, other pieces present the level of complexity and contradiction offered by English’s mural. However, for all of these artists there remains the issue of blurred boundaries between the commercialization of street art and a sense of its true purpose. ICY and SOT, for example, characterize themselves as artists who want to use “public art to envision a world freed from borders, war and gun violence.”50 One has to ask to what extent creating a mural in a high-end shopping district in one of the wealthiest and safest countries in the world contributes to that aim. On the other hand, the image the artists contributed is a version of a stencil that they have used elsewhere, which features a woman’s face surrounded by a cloud of black birds which break away from their tight formation closest to her face to fly off as they reach the edges of the composition. The artists have painted other versions, titled Let Her Be Free, of this work in Europe and the United States, and it has been described as “a portrait of an Iranian woman staring confidently into the horizon. Where once may have been her hijab now lingers a hundred birds about to take flight from a web of branches. When one bird soars the others will follow, signaling a great migration toward freedom. Let Her Be Free is a foray into this woman’s story as she frees herself from restrictions in her country.”51 While Emirati women are not subject to prosecution if they do not where the hijab (known locally as a shayla), family and institutional pressure is such that the vast majority of women in the UAE do adopt the black shayla and abaya as their dress when in public. Thus, the message of the piece has a similar cultural valence in the UAE as it would in the brothers’ home country of Iran. On the website for the Dubai Walls project, the work is not titled and, although brief mention is made of ICY and SOT’s activism, there is no interpretation provided for this piece. Were the commissioners of the work unaware of its symbolism

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or simply willing to turn a blind eye, given the fact that the work is visually compelling and a recognizable example of the artists’ work? Were the artists themselves intentionally making a subversive gesture through their choice of this particular image for a project in this particular country? In the context of the UAE, the message of Let Her Be Free becomes enigmatic and obscured, yet it may also be more apposite there than in the Western countries where it has also been displayed.

Heritage street art Throughout the UAE, but most noticeably in Dubai, a style that I term “heritage street” art has become popular. These are commissioned works, often at a very large scale, that take as their subjects various aspects of traditional Emirati culture. I have noted the presence of this type of street art in other Gulf countries, but the work in Dubai stands out for its quality and for some of the chosen locations for the work, as well as for the context of its creation. In 2016, sixteen large murals were painted on buildings on 2nd December Street in the Satwa neighborhood of Dubai. 2nd December is a major thoroughfare leading from the Dubai World Trade Center to the port, and Satwa is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city. The murals, again by an array of international street artists, were commissioned by the government of Dubai as the first phase in an ambitious Street Museum project approved by the ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, with the goal to “transform Dubai into an open-air museum, and promote aesthetic excellence and innovation.”52 The murals all feature subjects related to the culture and heritage of the UAE and the project was closely managed by Brand Dubai (part of the government’s media office) and Dubai Municipality. The subject for each mural was selected by the project team and artists were given substantial background information and direction to ensure that their chosen interpretation of each theme fit within established parameters. As project manager Shaima Al Suwaidi explained, “During the preparation period, we thoroughly reviewed every proposed theme so that each scene depicted by the artists would accurately portray life in the UAE. This attention to detail was necessary since the themes, which included abra, clothes, henna designs and dellah (coffee pot), mark out the UAE’s culture from other countries in the region.”53 This is a telling statement in its tacit acknowledgment that distinctions between traditional elements of

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material culture in Gulf countries can be so subtle that only a practiced eye could recognize them and, thus, provide guidance to artists in how to correctly represent specific objects. While this level of guidance or direction is unusual for a street art project, and undoubtedly raises questions as to what extent the artists were truly creating their own compositions as opposed to lending their visual style to a predetermined form, the end results are generally quite impressive. While in some cases the connection to UAE heritage can be difficult to ascertain (lions are not native to UAE, nor is a pickup truck carried aloft by balloons particularly representative of the country), those works that do clearly carry an historical message are striking. From Chinese painter Hua Tunan’s magnificent falcon to French artist Seth Globepainter’s witty image of a young Emirati boy and girl peering through windows on the corner of a building, the artists clearly imparted their own aesthetic to their works for the project. In Tunan’s case, this aesthetic appears to reference traditional Chinese ink painting, and, for Globepainter, it involves a colorful and playful approach reminiscent of children’s storybook illustrations.

Figure 35 Hua Tunan, Falcon mural on 2nd December Street, Dubai, UAE. Photo credit: Author.

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While the murals undoubtedly succeed on a visual level and have garnered substantial press for both this specific installation and the larger Street Museum project, there is, in addition to the issue of artistic direction, another unusual aspect of the project to be considered: its location at 2nd December Street and the Satwa neighborhood generally are home primarily to the many immigrants who make up the majority of the workforce in Dubai. The shops and restaurants lining the street cater primarily to a Southeast Asian population and that is the population who occupy the apartments above the storefronts. This is not a tourist area; although the newly constructed Etihad Museum sits at one end of 2nd December Street, visitors to the museum would be unlikely to approach it from this direction. Thus, the primary audience for these carefully framed and constructed murals is a transient population with a markedly different cultural heritage and set of reference points. Are the murals thus meant as a kind of educational image, created to present a vision of Emirati history and culture to enculturate this international working class? Or was the decision to place the first project of the Street Museum in this location more arbitrary, perhaps linked as much to the presence of accessible, visually imposing buildings as to any sense of cultural identity within the neighborhood?

9

Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Different Challenges

The countries discussed in the previous chapters are known for the role that street art played in their 2011 revolutions and/or for their thriving contemporary street art scene. However, there are other countries in the Middle East and among the region’s near neighbors that have not yet been discussed but in which street art also plays an important cultural and political role. For the most part, there is a lack of awareness of the production of street art in these countries on the part of both regional and international observers, which may be due to a perception that they are too war-torn or too religiously conservative to allow the creation of street art. However, in Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, street art has been and continues to be a viable means of social and political expression even under particularly dangerous and devastating conditions.

Syria: Where graffiti ignited a war In Syria, the start of the civil war, which, at the time of this writing, has raged for over seven years, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives and displacing millions of refugees, is primarily associated with an act of graffiti writing. A quick internet search turns up dozens of similar headlines from international news outlets: “For many Syrians, the story of the war began with graffiti in Dara’a” (CNN); “Anti-Assad graffiti that triggered Syrian uprising” (Al Jazeera); “The graffiti kids: How an act of teenage rebellion sparked the Syrian war” (Globe and Mail); and many others. The specific act in question occurred in March 2011 when four schoolchildren scrawled “It’s your turn doctor” on a wall in the small city of Dara’a in southern Syria. The thinly veiled threat gained its power from the recent

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topplings of the regimes in Tunisia (Ben Ali) and Egypt (Mubarak) and suggested the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (an ophthalmologist by training) would be the next to go.1 Dara’a was known both for its status as a particularly extreme example of the security state imposed by Assad on many Syrian cities and towns and also for the resolve and determination of its citizens to resist government intervention and oppression. These two elements would combine in the coming weeks to create a situation which rapidly escalated beyond the level of protest and government crackdown seen in other Arab Spring countries and would soon devolve into full-scale civil war. That a seemingly simple act of defiance by a small group of young boys could have such deep resonance says much about the impact of graffiti in countries where the practice was virtually unheard of (as seen earlier in the example of Ganzeer spraying “Down with Mubarak” on a Cairo billboard) and also indicates that pent-up resentments and anger in the Middle East, as elsewhere, can often find their initial public expression on city walls. The slightly oblique nature of the Syrian boys’ message, which is not as straightforward in its construction as “Down with Mubarak,” recalls the politically inflected but indirect graffiti of the Lebanese civil war, in which public writing on walls formed a key form of expression of sectarian affiliation and political goals through the use of sometimes cryptic messages, recognizable to insiders. The message in Dara’a was, of course, more than sufficiently clear to result in the arrest, detention, and torture of the boys who wrote it as well as in the protests by the citizens of Dara’a that led to their eventual release and in the escalating conflict between government forces and popular resistance. That the initial protests in Dara’a, which quickly spread to other cities, resulted not in the fall of a dictatorial regime as in other Middle Eastern countries in the spring of 2011 but rather in a long civil war derives from a complex and multifaceted set of dynamics. Certainly, many of the elements central to other Arab Spring uprisings were present in Syria, notably a growing and disaffected youth population and an increasingly intransigent and repressive government. However, a key difference was that the Syrian government is populated by members of minority sects, including the president’s own Alawite branch of Shia Islam, who were less troubled by killing the Sunni rebels than were their counterparts in countries such as Egypt, where members of the military, when confronted with protestors from their own ethnic and religious background, faced a more difficult decision in carrying out their orders to kill. Thus the specific conditions in Syria meant that the spark of graffiti ignited a far different conflagration than did graffiti and street art produced in other countries during the Arab Spring.

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Beyond that initial graffiti scrawl, street art was not a prominent feature of Syria’s civil war, likely because the conflict soon became widespread and resulted in complete destruction of so many cities and neighborhoods. Put simply, in the face of such chaos and devastation, the production of street art and even more basic graffiti seems irrelevant. Yet in 2015, a young rebel fighter named Abu Malek al-Shami chose to begin creating street art in the blockaded city of Darraya, just south of Damascus, where he was fighting with the Free Syrian Army. Al-Shami began slowly, uncertain of the reaction his work would receive from the local residents, but, as he says, “I noticed the amount of happiness and optimism it [the painting] spread on the faces of the blockaded people. It made me feel the value of my work, its positive impact.”2 Now dubbed “Syria’s Banksy,”3 al-Shami has painted over thirty murals in Darraya. These range from messages of hope, literally presented in a well-known painting of a young girl standing atop a pile of skulls and military helmets and writing the word “hope,” to more ironic commentary on the ongoing war and its impact on Syrian civilians. He has painted scenes of furniture in demolished houses and a mural of a woman cradling her child while sitting in despair amid the rubble with bombs falling overhead. Titled Mother Syria, the caption on the work reads “Happy Mother’s Day” and is dated March 21, 2015 (the date of Mother’s Day in Arabic countries that year). The potential for a negative reaction to these more ironic works,

Figure 36 Abu Malek al-Shami, Mural, Darraya, Syria. Photo credit: Quartz Media http://www.qz.com.

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particularly the ones painted in demolished and abandoned homes, is not lost on the artist: “At first, I was afraid of how people would react to the paintings on the walls of their demolished homes. It’s something of an emotional subject. People here have lost nearly everything, and they have a very strong connection to their homes.”4 That the works have instead seen a largely positive response may be attributable to al-Shami’s attentiveness to the emotional sensitivities of his fellow citizens and to his status as a member of the rebel forces in a city that was one of the first holdouts against the Assad regime. In contrast to the Lebanese artist Jad El Khoury, whose comic-style murals on bombed-out buildings in Beirut have been criticized for their insensitivity to the emotional and historical resonance of their locations, al-Shami seems to have successfully negotiated a delicate path between honoring the pain of the past while still offering some hope for the future. This attentiveness is evident in the selectivity al-Shami shows in his choice of locations for his work, sometimes choosing the rooftops of bombed buildings with the express intention of making images that “can be seen from the ground and from above. It is a message to the world that we can make something beautiful out of the destruction and ruin of war.”5 Although Syria has seen few international visitors during the years of the civil war, the Australian street artist Luke Cornish, also known as E.L.K., is one who has made the journey, traveling with a charity organization in 2016 and again in 2017. As a stencil artist in Australia, Cornish is particularly well-known for his detailed portraits, made with multilayered stencils and presented both on the streets and in smaller formats as gallery works. For his initial trip to Syria, he prepared a stencil portrait of Khaled Al-Asaad, the curator of antiquities at Palmyra who was beheaded by members of the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2015. Cornish installed the stencil on a door in the ancient city; it was later destroyed when ISIS returned to Palmyra.6 In addition to installing his memorial piece, Cornish spent time working with Syrian children creating street art as a means to inspire creative expression and free play even in the midst of war and chaos. His experience led him to establish a charitable organization, For Syria’s Children, which raises funds, in part, through the sale of artworks by Cornish and other artists. Of course, as with other internationally traveled and recognized street artists discussed previously in this book, Cornish runs the risk of being labeled as a sellout, given his strong gallery representation and the fact that one of his stencils sold at Bonham’s for over 30,000 Australian dollars. His commitment to Syria seems sincere and pragmatic (he specifically returned to Syria to oversee how the NGOs he supports were using the contributions from his charity) and his creation of an exhibition of work highlighting the current situation in the

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country contributes to raising international awareness of the horrific effects of the civil war. Cornish’s well-intentioned activities draw attention to the pressing, yet largely ignored, plight of Syrians who are refugees within their country and abroad. Yet, his position as an international figure free to come and go at will also highlights the uneven and infrequent attention paid by the international community to the humanitarian crisis in the country.

Yemen: Street art in a forgotten war zone The civil war in Yemen began in March 2015, four years after that in Syria, but also had its roots in the disaffection with long-standing and repressive regimes that first emerged during the Arab Spring of 2011.7 In fact, uprisings in the country in 2011 did lead to the handover of power from long-term president Ali Abdullah Saleh to his deputy Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, in a bid to bring stability to the impoverished and politically volatile country. President Hadi, however, could not stem the rising corruption, economic challenges, and food shortages and in the years after his appointment the rebel Houthi group, made up predominantly of minority Shia Yemenis, began to take control of regions in the north of the country. The government’s attempts to retake this land eventually escalated to civil war. One of the many complexities of the war in Yemen is the way in which it functions as a proxy war between Gulf Arab states and Iran. Iran is seen to back the Shia Houthi rebels and a coalition led by Saudi Arabia (largely consisting of just one partner, the UAE) has stepped in to support the government forces fighting against the Houthis, with the tacit support of the United States and the United Kingdom, major suppliers of arms to the Saudis and Emiratis. However, even the supposed coalition allies are not always aligned in their motives, as both Saudi Arabia and the UAE seek to advance their own economic agendas in the region by grabbing control of strategic trade routes and port cities. Thus, Yemen, already deeply troubled when the war started, has plunged into one of the worst, yet least globally recognized, humanitarian crises of the early twenty-first century.8 As with Syria, street art is not the first thing one would associate with such a severely compromised and demoralized country. Yet, amid the human desperation and ongoing military operations in Yemen, at least one artist is using street art to draw attention to his country’s plight and to offer its citizens an opportunity for self-expression. Murad Subay used street art to reflect his shock and pain when a Saudi airstrike killed twenty-seven Yemeni civilians in

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a neighborhood just outside the capital city of Sanaa in March 2015.9 His first work in response to the war, painted with a group of friends and local children, the mural is a memorial to those killed. The painting shows two children putting twenty-seven pictures of flowers on a wall; the fifteen flowers with only one leaf are to symbolize the children killed in the airstrike. The work is striking in the simplicity of its forms. The images of the flowers are in black and white, painted as if on white sheets of paper being pasted up by the two children, a boy and girl, whose backs are toward the viewer. Only a black line cutting across the upper left corner of each painted sheet suggests the work’s memorial function, serving as a visual symbol of death, similar to a black armband. Although thematically the painting relates to the martyr murals referenced elsewhere in this volume, it is unique in that the mural does not feature portraits of those killed but rather a simple, quite generic, stand-in for those individual victims. It is also an image about making images, suggesting that the process of mourning and memorializing in Yemen is far from complete. The flowers can be endlessly reproduced and affixed to walls for as long as the conflict continues to claim victims. At the time he created the memorial work, Subay had been using street art to comment on and to react against the political events in Yemen for five years, having initiated his first street art campaign in 2012. Already at that time, local factions in Sanaa were fighting for control of neighborhoods and Subay organized groups of local citizens to paint murals in these battle zones, often on walls marked with the physical scars of conflict. The campaign, called “Color your walls,” was described by the artist to be “like protesting by colors. We painted to paint on the ugliness of war, and say there are options instead of going to war and using weapons.”10 Although Subay continues to believe in the ability of street art to bring a sense of life and beauty to stricken communities, his work has evolved over the years to become more pointed in its critique of both the Yemeni government and the international community’s lack of action to ease the crisis in the country. He has painted images of those disappeared by the government during the war on the walls of government buildings. He has also created murals reflecting on the impact of sanctions and blockades on Yemeni civilians, millions of whom are malnourished and threatened by starvation. In one, a loaf of bread, a bottle of water, and a bottle of medicine are painted on a black background, covered by real barbed wire. Like the memorial flowers, the objects are painted in black and white, the only colors are a few blue drops of water on the bottle and a red cross on the medicine. The impact is stark and effective and the use of the barbed wire, a sort of mixed-media effect, strengthens

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Figure 37 Murad Subay, Mural protesting sanctions against Yemen. Photo credit: Murad Subay http://www.muradsubay.com.

that impact by quite literally rendering the objects inaccessible to passersby who would not put their hands through the wire. Another simple, yet compelling, mural by the artist was painted on the wall of the journalists’ syndicate building in Sanaa. It shows a black padlock, with the tip of a fountain painted in white with subtle yellow, red, and blue accents, centered on its front. The piece offers a mute testimony to the increasing crackdown on journalists and the loss of a free press as the war escalated in Yemen. It would be clear and powerful in any location, yet Subay’s placement of the work on a location specifically devoted to the practice of open journalism, once vibrant and now defunct, speaks volumes about the price of war not just in loss of human life but in loss of civil liberties. In December 2017, Polish street artist Igor Dobrowolski launched a project in Berlin titled Christmas in Yemen. The artist, whose approach to street art is unusual in that he paints on canvases which he then installs on public walls, created a series of photographs that combined an image from Yemen with stock photos of Christmas motifs (presents, shopping bags, Christmas trees). The photos from Yemen are tragic; almost all show children who are malnourished or have been victims of bombings. In some cases, the image of a famine-stricken

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child is juxtaposed with that of a full bag of shopping or a bowl of fruit. The images are cropped and collaged in such a way that the incongruity of the two (or more) representations is foregrounded; there is no escaping the obscenity of plenty in the face of such want. The photographs were pasted on walls throughout Berlin, materially indistinguishable from the glitzy advertisements for products and experiences to enjoy during the festive season. Dobrowolski’s project was executed just after the weeks-long blockade of Sanaa in November 2017, during which Saudi Arabia enforced a total ban on food, medical relief, humanitarian aid, and all other goods entering the city. Widely condemned by the international community, the blockade was finally lifted at the end of the month, but Dobrowolski’s work served as a poignant and timely reminder of the blockade’s devastating effects.

Saudi Arabia: Finding a place for street art Like Syria and Yemen, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not the first country that comes to mind when thinking about street art in the Middle East. Unlike its wartorn neighbors, however, the perceived absence of street art in Saudi is assumed to stem from the strictly enforced religious laws in the Kingdom. Yet, street art has a presence, albeit limited one, in the country and appears to be gaining acceptance as Saudi Arabia restructures and rebrands itself as a more open and balanced society, ready to play a greater role on the world stage. Interestingly, for a country known for its repressive treatment of women, some of the leading figures in the nascent street art scene in Saudi Arabia are female. Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali, who was born in Jeddah, the coastal city to the west of Mecca, has been described as one of Saudi Arabia’s first street artists. Her work, which largely utilizes stencil and wheatpaste, forms a critique of the rampant development that has taken place in the Kingdom in the past several decades, at the expense of traditional Hijazi material and social culture. Trained as a graphic designer at Dar Al Hekma College and in Islamic Arts at the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts in London, Al Abdali identifies strongly with the regional heritage and artistic traditions of the Hijaz, the western region of Saudi Arabia that is home to the holy cities of Mecca and Madina and was independent until annexed by the Saudi royal family in the 1920s. The Hijaz region has a rich history with evidence of occupation dating back thousands of years and excellent examples of pre-Islamic art and architecture. The people of the Hijaz are largely Sunni, in contrast to the Wahhabi royal family, and this

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Figure 38 Sarah Mohanna Al Abdali, Makka. Photo credit: Street Art News http://www.streetartnews.net.

sectarian divide contributes to an ongoing sense of differing identities and, at times, cultural and political priorities between the house of Saud and the longtime residents of the Hijaz. Al Abdali highlights the tensions between past and future in her simple, yet evocative, stencil sign toward Mecca. In the work, a black border frames an arrow that points in the direction of “Makka” (Al Abdali uses the Hijazi form of the name of the holy city). An inset within the frame shows a black, stenciled set of high-rise buildings instead of the expected image of the Ka’baa. With this extremely subtle gesture, Al Abdali speaks volumes about the ongoing construction projects around the holy sites which she, and many Saudis, view as inappropriate and offensive co-optations of the purpose of Mecca. Her comments on this development are as cutting and insightful as the piece itself: The ongoing destruction and construction schemes in Mecca have intensified my sense of political and cultural marginalization. In Mecca, Masjid al-Haram [Grand Mosque], the holiest site in Islam, is a place where all Muslims are supposed to be equal, a fact that is highlighted during the hajj season. Yet, the upscale King AbdulAziz Endowment Project (Abraj al-Bait Towers) overshadows the mosque on one side, while the Jabal Omar Development overshadows it on the other side. Other five- and seven-star megaprojects consisting of more skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and hotels geared for the comfort of the upper classes, are sure to ring in the mosque in the years to come. In order to construct Mecca based on this new, “modernizing” vision and under the excuse of accommodating the ever-increasing number of pilgrims, old sites,

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some dating back to the time of the prophet, have been demolished. What little is left of the Meccan/Hijazi identity and its material culture is being completely destroyed. What once was a cultural and economic entrepôt that prided itself on the diversity of its cultural and social traditions is today no different than any other commercial metropolitan city.11

In commenting on the development in Mecca and its negative consequences, Al Abdali aligns herself with renowned Saudi artists such as Ahmed Mater, whose work, in mediums including photography and video, has consistently explored and critiqued similar themes surrounding the conflicts between religion, heritage, and development in the country. Al Abdali has also created works that embody a more personal reflection on the loss of architectural heritage in her native city of Jeddah. Fain Majlisi was a wheatpasted, large-scale photograph of the artist’s great-grandfather, sitting in a majlis (council) in the old, walled city within Jeddah, known as al-Balad. Once an important social and cultural center of Jeddah, al-Balad is home to some of the most skilled traditional architecture and craftsmanship in the city and the region. As families moved from al-Balad into more modern houses and neighborhoods, the historic area began to deteriorate and now little of the original work remains fully intact. By inserting the image of her great-grandfather, a resident of al-Balad at its height, into the crumbling spaces of the contemporary city, Al Abdali conjures both a personal and a collective loss. A speech bubble above his head reads “Where’s my majlis?” and the question can be taken to refer to both the physical space of the majlis as an essential component of any traditional Arab home and the social space of the communal gathering that the majlis represents.12 With works such as this, Al Abdali taps into another theme that is becoming prominent in the work of contemporary Arab artists, particularly women artists, who are reflecting in their works on the loss of traditional material culture and social structures, often by referencing their own family past.13 Another female Saudi street artist, who goes by the pseudonym Saffaa, takes a different, more aggressive approach in her work. Frustrated by the restrictions imposed on women by Saudi’s male guardianship law (which requires a woman to obtain permission of a male relative or guardian in order to travel, marry, or be freed from jail), Saffaa began creating street art that spoke out against the law. In 2012, the artist created the image of a woman wearing the traditional male headdress of a red-checked keffiyeh (or shemagh). Across the lower half of her face is a placard reading “I am my own guardian.” The placement of the text has the same framing effect as the niqab, or face veil, worn by many Saudi women, which leaves only the eyes exposed. Visually, Saffaa’s image creates a

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tension between the masculine and the feminine, which references to gendered dress; its message, however, can be construed only as a feminist statement. The resemblance to works by the feminist artist Barbara Kruger, who famously collaged text and image to create similarly cutting messages in works such as Your Body is a Battleground, further underscores the intention behind the work. Saffaa’s work became the symbol for the #iammyownguardian movement, a grassroots attempt to overturn the guardianship law and to raise awareness of the fact that, despite seemingly radical changes such as allowing women to drive, the Kingdom remains a patriarchal and oppressive state for many women.14 Saffaa, who now lives in Australia, went on to further develop her voice as a feminist artist by celebrating the achievements of Muslim women in murals in Sydney. One of these, painted in 2016 on the wall of a Moroccan café popular with Arab ex-pats and run by a feminist activist, was subsequently defaced. However, in 2017, Saffaa worked with a group of artists to paint a larger and more complex version of the work on a building at the Sydney College of Art. The work features portraits of women who are active campaigners for women’s rights in the Kingdom, such as Maryam al-Otaibi, as well as victims of domestic violence and other abuses made acceptable by the guardianship law.15 Under reformist leader Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has announced the loosening of restrictions on tourism to the country and has launched several massive development projects, such as Qiddiya entertainment city, specifically aimed at developing a tourism industry in the country. Perhaps taking a cue from the neighboring UAE, Saudi Arabia has embraced the development of a contemporary art scene, as well as the preservation and reconstruction of heritage sites, as key to that vision. The contemporary art festival 21, 39 was launched on a small scale in 2013 in Jeddah and by 2018 featured new works by over thirty Saudi and international artists. Major art and culture hubs are set to open in Dammam (King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture), Riyadh (Misk Art Institute), and Jeddah (Art Jameel’s Hayy Creative Hub). It comes as no surprise, then, that street art projects and festivals are also cropping up as part of this surge of creative activity. As with such festivals elsewhere, there is a distinct lack of any sense of subversiveness in the production of subjects of the artwork produced; neither Sarah Al Abdali nor Saffaa would find their work welcome in these venues. Yet, projects such as the Inner Voices exhibition held in Jeddah alongside the 2015 edition of the 21, 39 festival as well as the 2018 Alfan Sharqy (Art is Eastern) initiative in Alkhobar do attempt to draw attention to the possibilities of street art as a means of legitimate visual expression in the Kingdom. Inner Voices was the result of a competition in which proposals were

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solicited from street artists in Saudi and abroad and selected works were then created on the streets of Jeddah, specifically in the al-Balad area where Al Abdali has also placed some of her work. The organizers of the show specifically stated their aim to showcase noncommercial work, to “return street art to the street.”16 At least in its intentions, then, Inner Voices maintains a purity of concept that distances it from commercial projects such as Dubai Walls. Alfan Sharqy was launched in early 2018 when over twenty Saudi artists participated in painting murals on houses in the historic Bayoonya neighborhood of Alkhobar, a city on the east coast, from which a causeway directly links Saudi Arabia with Bahrain. Although it is an exaggeration to state, as did some news reports, that Alfan Sharqy was the first street art project in the Kingdom, it is likely the first to be conducted under royal patronage: Princess Abeer bint-Faisal Al-Saud was the sponsor of the event.17 Unlike the Djerbahood project in Tunisia, which similarly used street art to breathe life into a run-down area, there appears to be no touristic or commercial intent behind Alfan Sharqy. It remains to be seen, then, whether Saudi Arabia will follow cities such as Dubai in integrating street art as part of a broader tourism and commercial development strategy or will leave even state-sponsored projects to run their own course without expectations for specific outcomes.

Iraq: Street art on both sides Although the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, ostensibly, to support the Iraqi people in their desire to rid the country of the dictator Saddam Hussein and to establish a democratic government, it quickly became clear that divisions between Americans and their erstwhile ally were too vast to be bridged effectively. Those divisions between the American military and the Iraqi public can be read in the street art produced in the country during the war and in the years since its proclaimed, if not real, end in 2011. Before the invasion, street art in Iraq consisted, as in Iran, primarily of largescale murals displaying images supportive of the government. Saddam Hussein, like the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, featured prominently in these murals, often posed in front of scenes or symbols designed to portray him as the savior of Iraq or even of the Muslim world in general. Often these were to be found in public spaces around Baghdad and throughout the country, although similar images were also displayed inside palaces and government buildings. Examples of this genre include images of Saddam charging toward Jerusalem, ready to

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liberate the city which is symbolized generally by the Dome of the Rock and perhaps the al-Aqsa mosque. In one such painting, Saddam rides a white horse and raises a sword; behind him an army stretches, which, however, is not an exclusively military group but also includes everyday citizens, some of whom carry a photo of the dictator. Ahead of him, missiles, planes, and tanks bear down on the city, emblems of Iraq’s offensive power. The mural was created on the occasion of Saddam’s sixty-fifth birthday in 2002 and obviously functions as a fictive, propaganda work. Intentionally or not, the painting resembles several canonical works of Western art, including most notably Jacques-Louis David’s painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1801) and numerous portraits of George Washington leading the American revolutionary troops. In other murals, Saddam’s image is inserted into scenes from Assyrian and Babylonian art or juxtaposed with the likeness of ancient rulers. In one such painting, Saddam’s portrait is on the left of the mural with that of the Babylonian king Hammurabi on the right. Hammurabi ruled Babylon in the seventeenth century BCE and is best known for issuing a law code which he claimed to have received from the god Shamash. A famous stele with a relief depicting the moment when the god gave the code to Hammurabi above an inscription of the law itself is shown in the mural between the two portraits.18 The Code of Hammurabi was unique in its assignment of specific punishments for specific crimes, often defined in terms of physical punishment of those found guilty (the code was also noteworthy for establishing the principle of presumption of innocence prior to conviction). The regulation of punishment was intended to establish a greater degree of legal order within Babylon and is echoed in codification of legal systems throughout the ancient and modern world. It was an interesting choice for Saddam: the code’s emphasis on physical punishment certainly coincided with Saddam’s preferred forms of retribution; however, its clear and established rules for effecting such punishment did not match the dictator’s strategies of torture and punishment without trial. Perhaps, Saddam was more interested in aligning himself with one of the most powerful of the rulers of ancient Babylon (located near Baghdad in present-day Iraq) than in the specificities of one of the key reasons for that leader’s power. The figure of the ancient king in the mural has at times been misidentified as Nebuchadnezzar II (r. c. 605–c. 653 BCE), who, like Hammurabi, was one of Babylon’s most powerful rulers.19 Another mural in which a famous ancient artifact is appropriated for Saddam’s representation shows him in a chariot reminiscent of that ridden by King Ashurbanipal (r. 668– c. 631 BCE) in the reliefs sculpted for the North Palace at Nineveh. Nineveh was one of the most important cities in ancient Assyria, another of the Mesopotamian

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kingdoms that lay within the borders of present-day Iraq. The extensive cycle of carvings, now housed mainly in the British Museum, depict the Assyrian king engaged in the sport of hunting lions, which were released into a closed arena where the king faced little danger of harm due to the presence of soldiers who assisted in dispatching the beasts. Nevertheless, the event provided a spectacle of royal power and its use as a subject for one of the most extensive decorative cycles in the palace suggests that it held an important status as emblem of the king’s power over his subject people and as a warning that such power could be extended to other kingdoms at will.20 The mural of Saddam reverses the orientation of the scene (Ashurbanipal is shown shooting his bow and arrow to the left, Saddam to the right) but the overall visual elements, including a lion being trampled under the feet of the horses pulling the chariot, offer a clear parallel with the ancient image. In Saddam’s mural, a rainbow extends from his drawn bow, with a line of white doves flying above it, an extraordinarily ironic transposition of an image originally intended to reiterate the absolute power of the monarch as a figure of aggressive authority into one apparently intended to emphasize the power of the dictator as a bringer of peace.21 After the beginning of the war in Iraq and particularly after Saddam was removed from power, most of these propagandistic and glorifying images of the dictator were defaced and destroyed. With the 2003 invasion of Iraq, new forms of street art began to appear in the country. Three types were most frequently seen: paintings created by American soldiers, murals created as part of beautification schemes in bombed cities and anti-American murals. The murals created by American servicemen and women were necessarily limited in geographic scope, appearing on the grounds of military bases, or perhaps on the external blast walls surrounding a base; however, hundreds were created over the long years of America’s engagement in Iraq. The subjects of these murals included images that identified particular regiments, such as the China Dragons (a dragon overlaid with the American flag as well as maps of Iraq and Iran) or troops from Pennsylvania (a montage of logos from Philadelphia sports teams) or Oregon (a group of cartoon figure soldiers standing in front of a forest landscape). Others presented more generic scenes of soldiers standing in front of the American flag or other symbols of the country such as the Statue of Liberty as well as memorials to fallen or wounded comrades. Several showed scenes of the Iraqi landscape, although generally in an idealized manner featuring sand dunes, camels, and Bedouin rather than showing the bombed-out devastation, burning oil wells, and searing dust of the

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actual environment. Some were solely text based, including a plain white wall with black lettering, headed “Why we are here” and listing terrorist incidents against the United States, with the number killed, from the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 to the attacks on September 11, 2001. As a group, the murals embody the combination of pride, bravado, fear, and loss that accompany all military endeavors; the use of a form of street art to convey these emotions may be reflective of the relative youth of those who fought in Iraq and of the increasing prominence of legitimized street art on the walls of US cities. Often painted on a very large scale and displayed where both fellow US soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi civilians would see the works, they served to claim and proclaim American territory as well as to advance a particularly American message in an unfamiliar and harsh landscape. As actions of the American military, notably the injustices perpetrated in Abu Ghraib prison, became known, the largely patriotic and bold statements in murals may have been intended to assert American pride and dominance in the face of setbacks in relations with the Iraqis or with the course of the war itself. As the war dragged on, the murals became a visual record of both individual and collective American presence in the region and, as such, have been documented not only by individual soldiers but through organized efforts such as the Graffiti of War Project.22 The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were hardly the first conflicts in which American soldiers used art as a means of expressing their responses to war, both during their time overseas and upon their return home. During and after the Vietnam War, soldiers frequently turned to painting, drawing, and photography to both document the events they witnessed and to reflect on or react to their experiences. Many of these works, particularly paintings and drawings, have been collected at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago and in La Salle University’s special collection of Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War, in Philadelphia.23 Janina Struk has written a compelling analysis of the ways in which soldiers have specifically used photography to create a personalized narrative of war from the nineteenth century through the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.24 Yet what is different about these earlier forms of visual expression of war experience is that they were largely personal and of a small scale; the street art and graffiti produced in Iraq is emphatically the opposite of this. In its large-scale and often collectively identified messages it seeks to provide a loud and clear personification of the American soldier, much in the way that large-scale street art murals throughout the world provide a loud and clear message about an artist, a community, or a country.

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In 2008, a beautification campaign was launched by the government of Baghdad and a multinational military division to paint murals on the concrete blast walls surrounding the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. The 100,000-dollar initiative was intended to “change the visible skyline,” according to US major Byron Sarchet. “Here is one good message to the next. You can stand at one [mural] and see the other.” While unspoken, another motivation for the project may have been to encourage Iraqis to forget the horrors of the four-year-long blockade by American and Iraqi forces from which the largely Shia neighborhood of Sadr City had just emerged. The allocation of funds for the project, while a mere fraction of the trillions of US dollars spent on the Iraq war as a whole, suggests it may have been a formal component of the ongoing American effort to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. News reporting on the project was uniformly positive; however, given the absence and suppression of dissenting news outlets in the country, the validity of that feedback is impossible to judge.25 In an insightful essay on the role of these walls themselves as well as on the contradictory nature of their beautification, Caecilia Pieri argues that the placement, specifically the painting, of such separation walls in Baghdad as in other cities such as Belfast and Beirut can reify the city as a space of urban conflict and even to suggest the semipermanence. As she writes, “The moment a T-wall becomes a painted T-wall signals a shift from the short-term

Figure 39 Example of beautification murals on T-walls in Baghdad, Iraq. Photo credit: 1st Lt. Angel Richardson (https://www.dvidshub.net/image/133951) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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temporality of the international conflict to the mid- or long-term temporality of the civil war, as the walls act as a new kind of permanent urban furniture.”26 Pieri conducted fieldwork in Baghdad and interviewed several of the artists of the murals who commented on the restrictions they faced in the determination of subjects and style for their work as all designs had to be negotiated with the commissioning body of the project and the Iraqi government steered artists away from anything that could be construed as political or sectarian in nature, leading to a predominance of banal landscapes, ornamental motifs, and scenes from Iraq’s ancient past. As Pieri states: Because they are not spontaneous and are never implemented without official permission, and as they are supervised by the official power, Baghdadi T-wall murals clearly have nothing to do with examples of street art such as the tags of Beirut . . . or the spectacular murals in revolutionary Cairo. They constitute an urban scene, but within a framework and limits which result from the power, not from the artists: for that reason, even when they show talent . . . their images have neither the subversive potential nor the markedly individualized “visual signature,” which are generally typical of the graffiti. Also, far from being treated as works of art, part of these T-walls are constantly removed and reused to erect other walls somewhere else, generally at night; in this process, paintings and slogans are dismantled and randomly reassembled. Therefore the meaning of the original mural is lost and the wall reassumes its role as a mere barrier. Finally, contrary to what happens with the separation wall in the Palestinian West Bank, invested by a host of foreign artists, Baghdad is still as difficult to access as it was before the 2003 war, albeit for different reasons. How could its walls become a cause for foreigners?27

In a host of ways, then, the beautification murals in Baghdad occupy a position alien to other street art in the Middle East, even that produced in other countries in conflict. Yet they retain value as an expression of the peculiar visual dynamics of a particular moment in Iraq’s history in which the power of street was recognized as both a potential strategy for community revitalization and a subversive force to be constrained lest those same communities assert too much collective force against sanctioned government policies and national narratives. In 2016, following the election of US president Donald Trump, another form of street art appeared in Iraq, specifically work created by one political cartoonist in Basra that has received international attention.28 Arkan al-Bahadli took to the street in February 2017 to paint a mural that criticized President Trump’s travel ban, which was initially imposed in January 2017 and blocked Iraqis as well

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as citizens from six other Muslim-majority countries from travel to the United States. Al-Bahadli’s mural, which is painted in the style of a political cartoon, features several panels. In one, Trump’s head is painted on the body of a bull, charging toward the Statue of Liberty, who wears a distressed expression and holds out a handful of grass as if in an attempt to distract or tame the animal. The words “Go Home!” are painted over the bull’s back, a reference to the president’s orders to would-be visitors and immigrants. The futility of the gesture by the Statue of Liberty suggests that the artist is claiming that American democracy, symbolized by the statue, is insufficient protection against the will of Trump. A second panel shows Trump as a skull and crossbones stencil, positioned atop an American flag, which is in turn surrounded by barbed wire. An even clearer message appears on this panel: “Border, No Passing.” Other sections of the mural begin to take on the tone, if not the visual appearance, of the anti-American murals that appear throughout Tehran. In one, Trump appears in what seems to be a vampire’s cape with a Nazi swastika behind him and the words “Down Trump” painted next to him. Al-Bahadli’s intense disappointment and anger at Trump’s actions stem from his understanding of the United States and Iraq as allies in a fight against terrorism, rather than countries at odds with each other: “Iraq and the US are supposed to be strategic allies and the latter is expected to protect Iraq’s interests and security and not antagonise the people who are the most afflicted by terrorism.”29 As such, the rage expressed in his murals, even if at times rendered in a sophomoric and visually simplistic caricature, has its roots in the resentment and incomprehension that have built up in the Iraqi people during the years of and since the US invasion of their country, in which it has rarely been clear exactly whose side America is on.

Afghanistan: Women’s resistance through street art Part of what might be termed the Greater Middle East, Afghanistan has been associated with the region in both popular media and Western geopolitical strategy since its invasion by US armed forces in 2001. The United States started its war in Afghanistan with the aim of finding Osama bin Laden, who was believed to be under the protection of the Taliban, the de facto rulers of the country. As the war dragged on, other motives, including nation building and establishing democratic rule of law in Afghanistan, were added to the US and coalition forces’ agenda. One of the pieces of evidence offered to justify the ongoing Western military involvement in Afghanistan was the incredibly

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repressive treatment of women at the hands of the Taliban. Although gender norms in Afghanistan, as in most countries, had historically positioned women in a subordinate role to men, during the period of Taliban rule the oppression of women was particularly severe and extended to the prohibition on education for women. Yet, examples of courageous and outspoken Afghani women who were determined to seek rights for themselves and other women have emerged even during the worst of the repressive times.30 In recent years, some of those strong women, determined to draw attention to and protest against gender imbalances in their country, have been street artists. One of the most readily identifiable features of Afghan womanhood, at least in the more conservative regions of the country, is the blue burqa: the full-length, voluminous garment which fully covers the head and face in a single piece of cloth, leaving only a grill-like woven section in front of the eyes and nose. Like the Iranian chador, the Afghani burqa has become a symbol of women’s repression, something that younger and less conservative women shun, in favor of the least restrictive coverings possible, usually a long jacket or shirt and pants and a colorful headscarf. Yet even younger women artists who do not wear the burqa themselves see the potency of the symbol and use it in their art. Both Shamsia Hassani and Malina Suliman, street artists in Kabul and Kandahar, respectively, refer to the burqa frequently in their work, albeit approaching and using its representation in different ways. Hassani, who began to create street art after attending a workshop in 2010, paints women in traditional clothing (the blue burqa or a variation thereof), often playing musical instruments or posed in front of colorful and sometimes illusionistic backgrounds.31 The artist describes her incorporation of the instruments as giving these women a voice; in a country where the Taliban suppressed all forms of artistic expression as un-Islamic, they can also be interpreted more broadly as a defiant gesture from any gender. Hassani is unusual in that she obtained her education in art and now teaches at Kabul University; she has also traveled abroad, including time spent in an artist residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2016. Her exposure to a broad range of artistic styles may account for the Western-inflected visual form of her work; the paintings draw not only on standard tropes of US street art (bold colors outlined in black, puffy, or 3D forms) but also on representations of women that resemble Japanese manga characters (large eyes, exaggerated eyelashes, a pointed face with nose and mouth minimized or eliminated). It is this latter formal connection that may be seen as troubling, or at least ironic, in the context of Hassani’s work. Both she and those who have written about her invariably characterize her as a feminist artist, using street art as a platform to

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Figure 40 Shamsia Hassani, Birds of No Nation series, Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo credit: Shamsia Hassani [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

express the realities of women’s lives in Afghanistan and to argue for a different future. As stated above, she views the incorporation of musical instruments in her work as a way of giving voice to voiceless women, and yet her female figures appear never to have a mouth and always to have their eyes closed and downcast. It is impossible to create an image much more marginalized than this: not only are the literal voices of these women taken away through the absence of a mouth but even their vision is obscured by their closed eyes. There is no possibility of a strong gaze meeting the world; even those with visible faces are as closed off as those who wear the full burqa. Assuming that Hassani is not consciously aware of the effect of her compositional choices (and if interviews with her are accurate, this appears to be the case),32 it is possible that her erstwhile feminist works are actually more appropriately interpreted as examples of how ingrained the culture of oppression is for the women of Afghanistan; even the strongest and most outspoken among them cannot fully escape defined and traditional gender roles. A second Afghani woman street artist who references the burqa in both her street art and in gallery installations is Malina Suliman. Unlike Shamsia Hassani’s work, Suliman’s is much more overtly critical of the treatment of women in Afghan society and specifically of the role of the burqa in enforcing the patriarchal culture of the country. One of her best-known works, created

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by a combination of stencil and freehand technique, is a painting of a skeleton wrapped in a burqa. The very simple execution of the piece is aligned with the characteristics of stencil graffiti as seen in Arab Spring street art in Egypt, Bahrain, and other countries; the combination of the stenciled skeleton with the more free-flowing burqa reinforces Suliman’s message of the restricting nature of the burqa. Unlike Hassani, who claims to be giving women a voice through her art, Suliman is much more negative, but perhaps realistic, about the message in her art, which is less of hope than of outrage: I have always used the burqa because men are using the burqa in the name of culture and religion to take freedom from women. Women are alive, they have their own wishes and desires, but all the time they have to sacrifice that. They are a kind of skeleton, which doesn’t have muscles. They’re just breathing, like a kind of puppet that barely exists. If women spoke for their rights, they were beaten by their husbands. So they don’t have a voice. They lose their voices and their wishes and their happiness.33

Suliman has lived much of her life outside of Afghanistan, attending art school in Pakistan, with her family in exile in India, and continuing her education in the Netherlands. While she retains a strong identity as an Afghani citizen, her somewhat nomadic existence makes it no surprise that she was a participant in the NSK State Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale. One of the many unauthorized, collateral exhibitions that pop-up across Venice during Biennale years, the NSK State Pavilion is part of a decades-long project by a group of European artists (NSK stands for Neue Slowensische Kunst, or New Slovenian Art) whose work grapples with issues of national identity and statelessness.34 Suliman has thus moved from a rather limited circle of Afghani artists making local gestures of resistance through art to participating in a global project to use art to raise awareness of the growing migrant crisis as well as threats from neofascist and other right-wing groups on the upsurge in Europe and beyond. As such, she has found a way to use the burqa as a strategy to expose rather than conceal the tribulations of Afghan women and of her country as a whole.

Conclusion

Street art, at least that created with paint or wheatpaste, requires a surface. While the surfaces on which street art appears can be as diverse as subway cars or lampposts, most often the work is created on a wall. Sometimes these walls are innocuous, unassuming blank canvases, wholly uninteresting except, perhaps, for the presence of the art itself. Often, however, the walls are already a contested or troubled feature of the landscape, even before street artists and graffiti writers claim them as their own. While this state of affairs is particularly visible in many of the areas discussed in this book, it is equally present in other conflict areas around the world. The themes discussed here resonate in Belfast, Berlin, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Salvador, Bogotá, Manila, Mumbai, Johannesburg, and beyond. In Belfast, Northern Ireland, so-called peace walls dividing the conflicted Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods of the city have become sites for dozens of murals and for conflict (or post-conflict) tourism.1 The subjects of the murals are, in many cases, similar to those found in Beirut, Cairo, Palestine, or Tehran: martyrdom, nationalism, heritage, and hatred of the opposing side in each conflict. While Belfast may be unique among that group in the physical presence of tourists walking or driving through the Shankill (Protestant) and Falls Road (Catholic) communities, the internet provides a vehicle for virtual tourism in the less accessible cities of the Middle East. In San Salvador, the most dangerous city in one of the most dangerous countries in Central America, El Salvador, young people are drafted into gangs at extremely young ages and constant targets for violence at the hands of other gang members and the police. Despite the fact that graffiti remains illegal in El Salvador, some local street artists have begun to use the medium as a way to expose youth to a community beyond that of the gangs by organizing community workshops and developing their street art crews into alternatives to gang membership. San Salvador, in the past twenty years, has experienced a surge of street art despite the risks involved in its production, and the practice of creating the art can help in building both individual and civic identity in ways that might resonate with artists in conflict locations such as Lebanon.2 The South African street artist Falko One paints colorful murals featuring elephants around Johannesburg,

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Cape Town, and other locations in post-apartheid South Africa. Playful and charming, the images at times carry a subtle political message, slipped into a seemingly mundane painting seemingly to avoid detection—like the messages and themes in some contemporary Beirut street art. In his Once upon a Town series, begun in 2015, the artist traveled to small towns and settlements around Cape Town painting elephants on private homes owned by some of the poorest residents of those communities: “His work, Falko says, helps residents to see their homes and neighborhoods in a new light. The murals, he adds, change the local perception of value.”3 However, the sponsorship of the project by Red Bull once again raises the issue of how commodification and consumerism intersect with ostensibly socially engaged projects and potentially corrupt them in the process. Like the work of eL Seed in the slums of Cairo and the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Falko One’s project in the shantytowns of South Africa does not escape the commercial drive of the professional, internationally active street artist. In Manila, the street artist collective Gerilya was founded in 2008 by students from the art school at the University of the Philippines Diliman.4 The many striking, large-scale murals created by the group focus on social, political, and historical themes, often celebrating moments in the history of the Philippines when ordinary and oppressed citizens rose up against unjust authority. Thematically, and, in some cases, stylistically, the works share features with those produced during the Arab Spring in Cairo, Bahrain, and Tunisia. The artists’ affiliation with a university art school recalls the muralists of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran, many of whom were connected to that city’s school of fine arts. As Gulf countries continue to develop their post-oil economies, street art will likely become an increasingly visible signifier of a cultural productivity and freedom of expression designed to attract tourists and expatriate residents alike. Yet the reality behind the walls, so to speak, is that street art production is likely to remain a government-controlled endeavor. The style of the art is meant to suggest aesthetic spontaneity, but its process of production, with commissions and design competitions sponsored by businesses tied to the royal families and the need for projects (and subjects) to be approved at the highest levels of government ensure that the work will, for the most part, continue to support a narrative that is constructed and disseminated by a few rather than many. It also remains to be seen whether local artists will ever be fully incorporated into these commercial projects. Already Emirati street artists have complained about the influx of American, European, Australian, and other international artists brought in to work on high-profile projects while local artists struggle to gain a foothold. There is also no indication that a market for street art as a gallery

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commodity is growing even in the supposed capitals of the art market in the Middle East, such as Dubai and Doha. Where galleries have shown work by street artists, they have been international figures, such as Ben Eine, with the occasional show of work by eL Seed, who might still be considered international even though he maintains a studio in Dubai. It is impossible to know what the sales results of such shows have been, but their small number and scale suggests that street art is not a growing market in the way that it has become in Europe and the United States since around 2000. Meanwhile, in other, more conflict-ridden countries in the region, street art will continue to serve multiple functions as a vehicle of protest, a form of commemoration for martyrs and a means of beautification of war-torn neighborhoods. In countries such as Egypt, Bahrain, and Tunisia, the work of the Arab Spring is not yet complete, as initial populist gains and regime changes have not yielded the desired long-term improvements in the quality of life for everyday citizens. At the time of this writing, there is concern that Lebanon will be pulled back into a state of conflict due to spillover from the Syrian civil war, including a massive influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon and attacks by the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah on Syrian rebel groups. If the instability continues to escalate, the street art scene in the country may turn away from its focus on positive and celebratory images, many designed to encourage cultural tourism in a redeveloped Beirut and return to its origins as a way of marking territory and proclaiming ideologies as seen during the 1975–90 civil war. As tensions between the United States and Iran rise as the result of President Trump’s announced withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, Iran is likely to retreat from the international community as it seeks to control its destiny in the face of renewed economic, political, and social hardships for its people. Tensions between the hardline religious leaders of the Islamic Republic and more moderate elements among the general population are likely to become exacerbated, possibly leading to protests such as those seen during the 2009 presidential election. If this happens, it will be interesting to see whether street art in Iran emerges as a more potent means of subversive political expression as opposed to serving only as a means of commemorating those who died for the cause of the Islamic Republic and beautifying the sprawling and chaotic urban landscapes that emerged in the years following the 1979 revolution. Israel and Palestine occupy and will likely continue to occupy a unique position in terms of their street art. On one side of the separation barrier, in Israel, a growing street art scene will likely mirror that of Beirut in the first two decades

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of the twenty-first century, when young artists, inspired by international street art, began making work that, while not always strictly legal, was nonetheless excused and in some instances welcomed. These apolitical works run little risk of raising the ire of authorities or of the general public and are becoming embedded in the cultural fabric of cities such as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; the availability of guided street art tours in both cities supports this view. On the other side of the separation barrier, in Palestine, a desperate situation is likely to grow even more desperate, as the massive demonstrations in spring 2018, spurred by the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, indicate. The separation barrier is likely to remain a locus for the local expression of rage, grief, fear, and hope that it is today; what is less clear is whether it will remain one of the few relatively accessible locations for international street artists to add their voice to the chorus of discontent in the region or whether the deteriorating security situation will render that option all but impossible for foreign visitors. The heritage, traditions, history, and current political and economic realities of the countries that make up the Middle East are far from unified, and the heterogeneity of the region has impacted, and will continue to impact, the development of a street art culture. What is clear, in all locations in the Middle East, regardless of their individual geopolitical, economic, religious, or social characteristics, is that street art will remain, and likely continue to grow, as a significant means of visual expression across the region.

Notes Introduction 1 Timothy J. Clark, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973), p. 13, emphasis in original. 2 Rafael Schacter, The World Atlas of Street Art and Graffiti (London: Aurum Press Ltd, 2013). 3 Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant, Subway Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1984). 4 Ibid., p. 74. 5 Ibid., p. 104. 6 For more on the 1984 exhibition and its 2013 counterpart see, for example, Leila Heller Gallery, “Calligraffiti: 1984–2013,” Leila Heller Gallery, n.d. Available at www.leilahellergallery.com/exhibitions/caligraffitti-1984-2013 (accessed April 15, 2018) and Daniel Bates, “Font of youth,” The National, September 19, 2013. Available at www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/font-of-youth-1.469987 (accessed April 15, 2018). 7 Lynn A. Powers, “Whatever happened to the graffiti art movement?,” Journal of Popular Culture 29/4 (1996), pp. 137–42. 8 Ibid., pp. 139–40. 9 Ibid., p. 140. 10 Powers cites critics such as Peter Schjeldahl and Lawrence Alloway whose reviews of the graffiti art shows held in the late 1970s were not flattering, despite Alloway’s initial enthusiasm for the movement. 11 Powers, “Whatever happened to,” p. 141. 12 Pascal Zoghbi and Don Karl (eds), Arabic Graffiti, 3rd edn (Berlin: From Here to Fame Publishing, 2013). 13 Ibid., p. 7. 14 Ibid., p. 9. 15 Ibid., p. 15. 16 Kristine Somerville, “The urban canvas and its artists,” The Missouri Review 34/3 (2011), p. 105. 17 Sondra Bacharach, “Street art and consent,” British Journal of Aesthetics 55/4 (2015), pp. 481–95. 18 Ibid., p. 481.

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19 “Guerrilla knitting” refers to the practice of covering public objects in crocheted or knitted outfits—these are affixed to both functional objects such as fire hydrants and bicycle racks and symbolic objects such as war memorials. “Seed bombing” involves throwing bundles of seeds into urban waste ground to sow flowers and vegetables in the abandoned land. 20 Bacharach, “Street art and consent,” p. 483. 21 Ibid., p. 490. 22 Nicholas Alden Riggle, “Street art: The transfiguration of the commonplaces,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68/3 (2010), pp. 243–57. 23 Ibid., pp. 245–6. 24 Ibid., p. 255. 25 While street art produced at festivals might appear to meet the criteria of “ephemerality” as described by Riggle, the fact that works produced at such events are often transported to other locations, or sold, for permanent display suggests that this criteria, as well, is not satisfied. 26 Riggle, “Street art,” p. 249. 27 Blake Gopnik, “Revolution in a can: Graffiti is as American as apple pie, but much easier to export,” Foreign Policy 189 (2011), pp. 92–3. 28 Ibid., p. 93. 29 Ibid. 30 That challenges to Western understanding of the conflicts and their protagonists exist is supported by the proliferation of “cheat sheets” such as “The Middle East: Key players and notable relationships.” Available at www.informationisbeautiful. net/visualizations/the-middle-east-key-players-notable-relationships/ (accessed April 2, 2017). News outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC also frequently publish interactive graphics and other shorthand guides to the various entanglements in the region. 31 I am grateful to my colleagues at Zayed University who pushed me to give further consideration to regional politics as part of this project and offered helpful guidance as I sought out that knowledge. 32 Among these, the numerous works of Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the Independent, have proven indispensable for their clear and unflinching description of the region’s past and present and of the role that Western governments have often played in exacerbating the turmoil. 33 Austin Smith, “The 10 best places in Manila to see street art,” Culture Trip, October 16, 2016. Available at www.theculturetrip.com/asia/philippines/articles/the-10best-places-in-manila-to-see-street-art/ (accessed March 15, 2018). 34 Leonard Bartolomeus, “Street art in Indonesian social and political life,” The Guggenheim, n.d. Available at www.guggenheim.org/blogs/map/street-art-inindonesian-social-and-political-life (accessed March 15, 2018).

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35 Suneet Zisham Langar, “This street art foundation is transforming India’s urban landscape—With the government’s support,” ArchDaily, August 8, 2017. Available at www.archdaily.com/876705/this-street-art-foundation-is-transforming-indiasurban-landscape-with-the-governments-support (accessed March 15, 2018). 36 Among the best known internationally are Blek le Rat, Faile, Alias, and Nick Walker although many other stencil artists have strong local recognition and followings, particularly in Europe. The Iranian, but Brooklyn based, duo ICY and SOT are among the best-known stencil practitioners to have emerged from the Middle East and will be discussed later in the volume.

Chapter 1 1 Mia Gröndahl, Revolution Graffiti: Street Art of the New Egypt (London: Thames and Hudson, 2012), pp. ix–x. 2 Ibid., p. 43. Ganzeer sprayed “Down with Mubarak” on the back of a billboard and, while undoubtedly an act of political defiance and an example of the use of graffiti in public space to spur on revolutionary activities, it is difficult to see in its visual style the roots of the street art that came to dominate Cairo during and after the eighteen days of revolution that led to Mubarak’s ouster. Ganzeer himself describes his writing as a “bomb,” a term associated with the graffiti tradition of tagging public spaces, a reliance more on text than on image for the action’s effectiveness. 3 Lina Khatib, “Street art and the Egyptian revolution,” IEMed. Mediterranean Yearbook (2013), pp. 299–301. 4 There is an extensive literature on the Mexican Muralism movement; for two recent critical introductions, see Alejandro Anreus, Robin Adèle Greeley, and Leonard Folgarait (eds), Mexican Muralism: A Critical History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012) and Mary Coffey, How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture: Murals, Museums, and the Mexican State (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). 5 Soraya Morayef, “Women in graffiti: A tribute to the women of Egypt,” Suzee in the City, January 7, 2013. Available at suzeeinthecity.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/ women-in-graffiti-a-tribute-to-the-women-of-egypt (accessed February 22, 2016). 6 Maria Antonietta Malleo, “Through the streets of Cairo,” Arte e Critica 74 (2013). Available at www.arteecritica.it/archivio_AeC/74/articolo11-eng.html (accessed July 9, 2017). 7 Ganzeer, “7 things I have learned from the mask of freedom,” ganzeer.com, June 2011. Available at www.ganzeer.com/post/158072880804/7-things-i-have-learnedfrom-the-mask-of-freedom (accessed March 12, 2018).

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8 Chad Elias, “Graffiti, social media and the public life of images in the Egyptian revolution,” in B. Hamdy and D. Karl (eds), Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution (Berlin: From Here to Fame Publishing, 2014), p. 89. 9 Quoted in Christiane J. Gruber, “Nefertiti in a gas mask,” The Brooklyn Rail, June 3, 2015. Available at www.brooklynrail.org/2015/06/criticspage/nefertiti-in-a-gasmask (accessed April 7, 2018). 10 Soraya Morayef, “Women in Egypt through the narrative of graffiti,” MENASource, March 5, 2015. Available at www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/egyptsource/women-inegypt-through-the-narrative-of-graffiti (accessed February 23, 2016). 11 Hamdy and Karl, Walls of Freedom, p. 99. 12 Deena Adel, “Reviving revolution: The role of art in an uncertain Egypt,” Public Radio International, November 5, 2011. Available at www.pri.org/stories/2011-11-05/ reviving-revolution-role-art-uncertain-egypt (accessed August 12, 2017). 13 Hamdy and Karl, Walls of Freedom, p. 35. 14 Basma Hamdy, “The power of destruction,” in Walls of Freedom, p. 248. 15 “[And they would say:] Our lord! We obeyed our chiefs and our great ones, but they led us astray. Our Lord! Give them double the punishment and send upon them a mighty curse!” Surah Al-Ahzab 33: 67–8, quoted in Rana Jarbou, “Words are weapons,” in Arabic Graffiti, p. 44. 16 Rachel Milstein, “Angels in art and architecture,” in K. Fleet, G. Krämer, D. Matringe, J. Nawas, and E. Rowson (eds), Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three (2007). Consulted online on October 18, 2017. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15733912_ei3_SIM_0077. 17 Ahmed Aboul Hassan, “The wall: People’s chronicle and voice of the revolution,” in Walls of Freedom, p. 135. 18 Hamdy, “The power of destruction,” p. 250. 19 Hamdy and Karl, Walls of Freedom, p. 204 and pp. 226–7. 20 Egyptian political cartoonists are still active, if underground. For more on political cartooning in Egypt, see Josh O’Neill, “Egypt’s cartoonists are drawing a lost revolution,” The Atlantic, November 20, 2017. Available at www.theatlantic. com/international/archive/2017/11/egypts-cartoonists-are-still-drawing-a-lostrevolution/546398/ (accessed March 30, 2018). 21 The fact that the artist chose as his pseudonym the name of perhaps the best-known modern artist in the West may signal his allegiance to European and American styles. 22 “When artists attack the king: Honoré Daumier and La Caricature, 1830–1835,” Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, n.d. Available at museum.stanford.edu/ news_room/daumier.html (accessed June 21, 2017). 23 Catherine Bronson, “Imagining the primal woman: Islamic selves of Eve,” PhD diss. (University of Chicago, 2012). 24 Christopher L. C. E. Witcombe, “Eve and the identity of women,” n.d. Available at witcombe.sbc.edu/eve-women/5eveserpent.html (accessed February 3, 2017).

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25 Yasmin El Shazly, “The origins of the rebellious Egyptian personality,” in Walls of Freedom, p. 7. 26 For examples of Egyptian modernist, as well as contemporary, art see “Egypt,” The Barjeel Art Foundation, n.d. Available at www.barjeelartfoundation.org/artist/ egypt/ (accessed March 23, 2018). 27 Soraya Morayef, “Street art and the city,” The Arab Review, n.d. Available at www. thearabreview.org/cairo-street-art-revolution (accessed February 22, 2016). 28 Giacomo Crescenzi, “What has become of art in Egypt since #Jan25?,” Egyptian Streets, August 2, 2013. Available at www.egyptianstreets.com/2013/08/02/whathas-become-of-art-in-egypt-since-jan25 (accessed March 8, 2016). 29 Menna A. Farouk, “Egypt’s graffiti artists struggle to bring women to street walls,” Al-Monitor, January 19, 2017. Available at www.al-monitor.com/pulse/ru/contents/ articles/originals/2017/01/egypt-graffiti-artists-women-walls-cairo.html (accessed July 10, 2017). 30 The project was supported by the Swedish Institute. 31 Soha Elsirgany and Walt Curnow, “Egyptian street art in search of a code of ethics,” Ahram Online, April 7, 2015. Available at english.ahram.org.eg/ NewsContent/5/35/127132/Arts--Culture/Stage--Street/Egyptian-street-art-insearch-of-a-code-of-ethics.aspx (accessed July 10, 2017). 32 Ibid. 33 “Contact and about,” The Barjeel Art Foundation, n.d. Available at www. barjeelartfoundation.org/contact-us/ (accessed March 23, 2018). 34 “Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi: The Twitter giant who fell silent,” Fanack: Chronicle of the Middle East and North Africa, October 4, 2017. Available at www.fanack. com/united-arab-emirates/faces/sultan-sooud-alqassemi/ (accessed March 24, 2018). 35 An image of the painting can be found at www.barjeelartfoundation.org/collection/ mohamad-fahmy-ganzeer-life/ (accessed March 23, 2018). 36 Quinn Moreland, “Forty years of Carolee Schneemann’s Interior Scroll,” Hyperallergic, August 29, 2015. Available at www.hyperallergic.com/232342/fortyyears-of-carolee-schneemanns-interior-scroll/ (accessed March 24, 2018).

Chapter 2 1 Liliane Buccianti-Barakat and Henri Chamussy, Le Liban: Géographie d’un pays paradoxal (Paris: Éditions Belin, 2012), p. 10. 2 Oliver Wright, “Is Beirut’s glitzy downtown redevelopment all that it seems?,” The Guardian, January 22, 2015. Available at www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/ jan/22/beirut-lebanon-glitzy-downtown-redevelopment-gucci-prada (accessed February 20, 2017).

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3 “Beirut and its city center,” Solidere Group, n.d. Available at www.solidere.com/citycenter/beirut-and-its-city-center (accessed April 20, 2017). 4 Ibid. 5 Youssef Tohme, Intensive Beyrouth (Paris: Éditions Norma, 2014), p. 9. 6 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 2, part 2 (1931–1934), “Ibizan Sequence,” 1932, ed. Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 576. 7 Ibid. 8 Typhanie Cochrane, “New excavations across downtown Beirut, Saifi and Martyr’s Square,” Beirut Report, February 4, 2018. Available at www.beirutreport. com/2018/02/new-excavations-across-downtown-beirut-saifi-and-martyrs-square. html (accessed March 30, 2018). 9 For a discussion of the role of graffiti during the civil war see Maria Chaktoura, La Guerre des Graffiti: Liban 1975–1978 (Beirut: Éditions Dar An-Nahar, 1978). 10 SISKA, “Beirut never dies,” in Arabic Graffiti, p. 101. 11 Other well-known phrases from what might be categorized as a series of works included “Beirut shame,” “for Beirut” and “if Beirut could speak.” 12 Tala F. Saleh, “Marking Beirut,” in Arabic Graffiti, p. 81. 13 Ibid., p. 85. 14 Lucia Volk, Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010), p. 54. 15 Ibid., p. 54. 16 Ibid., p. 68. 17 Maya Abu Nasr, “‘Martyrs’ Statue returns to original site after 8-year absence,” The Daily Star, July 16, 2004. Available at www.dailystar.com.lb/News/LebanonNews/2004/Jul-16/4128-martyrs-statue-returns-to-original-site-after-8-yearabsence.ashx (accessed November 19, 2017). 18 Volk, Memorials and Martyrs, p. 114. 19 Josh Wood, “Hizbollah’s faces of the dead haunt Beirut’s southern suburbs,” The National, May 14, 2016. Available at www.thenational.ae/world/1.221668 (accessed February 17, 2017). 20 Moe-Ali Nayel, “Beirut’s bullet-riddled Holiday Inn—A history of cities in 50 buildings, day 28,” The Guardian, May 1, 2015. Available at www.theguardian. com/cities/2015/may/01/beirut-holiday-inn-civil-war-history-cities-50-buildings (accessed July 9, 2017). 21 India Stoughton, “The scars of war on Lebanon’s Holiday Inn,” Al Jazeera, December 30, 2015. Available at www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/12/scars-warlebanon-holiday-inn-151219082356997.html (accessed July 12, 2017). 22 Ibid.

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23 Ibid. Note that other sources describe Khoury’s acts as clandestine and illegal, although it is unclear whether this designation includes the Holiday Inn project or refers only to other works in Khoury’s War and Peace series of 2015. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Tamsyn Burgman, “Beirut artist uses bombed out buildings as canvases, transforming scars of war into works of peace,” National Post, August 19, 2015. Available at news.nationalpost.com/life/travel/beirut-artist-uses-bombed-outbuildings-as-canvases-transforming-scars-of-war-into-works-of-peace (accessed October 10, 2017). 27 “Jad El Khoury adds colorful doodles to Beirut’s scars of war,” Designboom, December 28, 2015. Available at www.designboom.com/art/jad-el-khoury-warpeace-art-attack-beirut-12-28-2105/ (accessed September 20, 2017). 28 Gregory Buchakjian, “Abandoned dwellings in Beirut,” n.d. Available at www. buchakjian.net/photo/beirutabandoneddwellings/index.html (accessed October 10, 2017). 29 “Single man project in Kuwait by Jad El Khoury,” Art Kuwait, November 3, 2016. Available at www.artkuwait.org/2016/11/single-man-project-in-kuwait-by-jad-elkhoury.html (accessed March 12, 2017). 30 “A celebration of the Lebanese mountains through art and . . . wine,” ArabAd, November 1, 2016. Available at www.pressreader.com/bahrain/ arabad/20161101/282870845392643 (accessed March 12, 2017). 31 New York Comics and Picture Story Symposium, “Zeina Abirached,” The Rumpus, September 20, 2013. Available at www.therumpus.net/2013/09/the-new-yorkcomics-and-picture-story-symposium-zeina-abirached/ (accessed March 15, 2017). 32 Mlynxqualey, “Graphic novelist Zeina Abirached on remembering and forgetting Beirut,” Arab Literature, August 12, 2015. Available at www.arablit.org/2015/08/12/ graphic-novelist-zeina-abirached-on-remembering-and-forgetting-beirut/ (accessed March 15, 2017). 33 Venetia Rainey, “Q&A: Calligraphy meets street art in Beirut,” Al Jazeera, June 17, 2015. Available at www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/qa-calligraphy-meets-streetart-beirut-150616064634855.html (accessed July 6, 2017). 34 See, for example, Venetia Rainey, “Q&A” and Sarah Elkamel, “Meet ‘Beirut’s Banksy,’ the artist who’s transforming the city one wall at a time,” The Huffington Post, September 4, 2015. Available at www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/in-lebanonan-artist-for-a-new-generation-is-born_us_55e9bff4e4b093be51bb5025 (accessed March 22, 2016). 35 Jaime Alyss Holland, “Beirut speaks: New graffiti sub-cultures of Beirut, Lebanon,” MA thesis (University of Arkansas, 2014), p. 44. 36 Ibid., p. 45.

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37 Danny Hudson, “Street art on the steps of Beirut by Dihzahyners,” Designboom, September 8, 2012. Available at www.designboom.com/art/street-art-on-the-stepsof-beirut-by-dihzahyners/ (accessed March 21, 2017). 38 Naomi Larsson, “Beirut is more beautiful by bike: Street art reinvents a notorious city—In pictures,” The Guardian, June 15, 2017. Available at www.theguardian.com/ cities/gallery/2017/jun/15/beirut-bike-street-art-chain-effect-in-pictures (accessed July 13, 2017). 39 “Street art brings colour to a rundown Beirut suburb,” The National, August 27, 2017. Available at www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/street-art-brings-colour-torundown-beirut-suburb-1.623364 (accessed September 19, 2017). 40 One of the earliest US projects to use street art as a means of reclaiming distressed urban environments was the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program; see www.muralarts. org/. 41 “About,” Mural Arts Philadelphia, n.d. Available at www.muralarts.org/about/ (accessed April 3, 2018).

Chapter 3 1 Yale Law School, “The Sykes-Picot Agreement: 1916,” The Avalon Project, n.d. Available at avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/sykes.asp (accessed March 6, 2017). 2 Although the contemporary map of the Middle East was not fully determined by the Sykes-Picot agreement and instead “emerged from a long and complex process of treaties, conferences, deals and conflicts that followed the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and the end of World War One,” the “spirit of Sykes-Picot, dominated by the interests and ruthless ambitions of the two main competing colonial powers, prevailed during that process and through the coming decades, to the Suez crisis of 1956 and even beyond” from Jim Muir, “Sykes-Picot: The map that spawned a century of resentment,” BBC News, May 16, 2016. Available at www. bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36300224 (accessed March 6, 2017). 3 Robin Wright, “How the curse of Sykes-Picot still haunts the Middle East,” The New Yorker, April 30, 2016. Available at www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-thecurse-of-sykes-picot-still-haunts-the-middle-east (accessed March 6, 2017). 4 Yale Law School, “Balfour Declaration: 1917,” The Avalon Project, n.d. Available at avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/balfour.asp (accessed March 6, 2017). 5 US Department of State, “The Arab-Israeli War of 1948,” Office of the Historian, n.d. Available at history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/arab-israeli-war (accessed March 10, 2017). 6 US Department of State, “The Arab-Israeli War of 1967,” Office of the Historian, n.d. Available at history.state.gov/milestones/1961-1968/arab-israeli-war-1967 (accessed March 10, 2017).

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7 Nigel Parry, “Well-known UK graffiti artist Banksy hacks the wall,” The Electronic Intifada, September 2, 2005. Available at www.electronicintifada.net/content/wellknown-uk-graffiti-artist-banksy-hacks-wall/5733 (accessed March 8, 2016). 8 Ibid. 9 Mark Brown, “Season’s greetings from Banksy and friends,” The Guardian, December 1, 2006. Available at www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/dec/01/topstories3. arts (accessed February 23, 2016). 10 Peter Kennard, “Art attack,” The New Statesman, January 17, 2008. Available at www.newstatesman.com/arts-and-culture/2008/01/art-work-banksy-palestinian (accessed April 20, 2017). 11 Rachel Corbett, “Banksy fans decry removal of street art works from Palestine,” artnet, August 30, 2011. Available at www.artnet.com/magazineus/news/ artnetnews/banksy-palestinian-works.asp (accessed April 15, 2017). 12 Guy Adams, “Hacked off: The art show that’s driven Banksy up the wall,” The Independent, September 3, 2011. Available at www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/art/news/hacked-off-the-art-show-thats-driven-banksy-up-thewall-2348433.html (accessed February 22, 2016). 13 Rom Levy, “Banksy unveils a new series of pieces in Gaza, Palestine,” Street Art News, February 25, 2011. Available at www.streetartnews.net/2015/02/banksyunveils-new-series-of-pieces-in.html (accessed April 17, 2017). 14 “Police in Gaza seize “$175” Banksy painting amid ownership dispute,” RT, April 9, 2015. Available at www.rt.com/news/248393-banksy-painting-gaza-dispute/ (accessed April 15, 2017). 15 Pascal Zoghbi and Don Karl, “Palestinian Graffiti,” in Arabic Graffiti, p. 65. 16 Ibid., p. 77. 17 William Parry, Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine (London: Pluto Press, 2010), p. 15. 18 Ibid., p. 77. 19 Zia Krohn and Joyce Lagerweij, Concrete Messages: Street Art on the IsraeliPalestinian Separation Barrier (Årsta: Dokument Press, 2010). 20 Ibid., p. 7. 21 Adam Yekutieli, “This is limbo: About,” This Is Limbo, n.d. Available at www. thisislimbo.com/about/ (accessed July 12, 2017). 22 Krohn and Lagerweij, Concrete Messages, p. 51. 23 Caledonia Curry, “About,” n.d. Available at www.caledoniacurry.com/ (accessed July 12, 2017). 24 Krohn and Lagerweij, Concrete Messages, p. 77. 25 Ibid., p. 78. 26 Ethel Seno (ed.), Trespass: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art (Köln: Taschen, 2010), p. 83. 27 Krohn and Lagerweij, Concrete Messages, p. 21.

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28 29 30 31 32

Ibid., p. 37. Seno, Trespass, p. 74. Krohn and Lagerweij, Concrete Messages, p. 115. Ibid., p. 115. Mahmoud Abu Hashash, “On the visual representation of martyrdom in Palestine,” Third Text 20/3&4 (2006), p. 399. 33 Parry, Against the Wall, p. 59. 34 Ibid., p. 62.

Chapter 4 1 Christiane J. Gruber, “The message is on the wall: Mural arts in post-revolutionary Iran,” Persica 22 (2008), pp. 15–46. 2 Ibid., throughout the essay. 3 Ibid., p. 38. 4 Charlotte Noruzi, Urban Iran (New York: Mark Batty Publisher, 2008), p. 24. 5 Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), pp. 118–19. 6 This comment refers to information available in English; there may be sources in Persian or Arabic of which I am unaware. 7 “Hannibal Alkhas,” Iran Chamber Society, n.d. Available at www.iranchamber.com/ art/halkhas/hannibal_alkhas.php (accessed July 5, 2017). 8 Despite the contributions of Alkhas and his students and colleagues to the production of revolutionary art, in 1982 Tehran University’s Department of Fine Arts was closed down in light of the new prohibitions on figurative and other art considered too Western in nature that were put in place during the Cultural Revolution. See Talinn Grigor, Contemporary Iranian Art: From the Street to the Studio (London: Reaktion Books, 2014), p. 106. 9 For a discussion of the evolution of public art from a tool embraced by the Pahlavis to a prime means of revolutionary expression, see Grigor, Contemporary Iranian Art, pp. 28–38. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., pp. 42–4. 12 M. Husayn Tahatahi, quoted in Thomas W. Lippman, Understanding Islam: An Introduction to the Moslem World (New York: New American Library, 1982), p. 143. 13 The UAE, for example, instituted Commemoration or Martyrs Day in 2015 as an annual national holiday; in 2016, a permanent Martyrs Memorial was opened in the capital, Abu Dhabi. 14 Gruber, “The message is on the wall,” p. 38.

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15 “Mission,” The Tehran Beautification Organization, n.d. Available at en.zibasazi. ir/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=4&Itemid=128 (accessed March 25, 2018). Although the mural project was initiated in 2004, the organization’s presence in the city dates back to 1973, according to their website. 16 Jonathan Jones, “Tehran’s answer to Banksy: Mehdi Ghadyanloo hits Britain,” The Guardian, February 26, 2015. Available at www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2015/feb/26/mehdi-ghadyanloo-tehran-iran-street-art-banksy (accessed May 13, 2017). 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 “The truth about Tehran, by artist Nazgol Ansarinia,” The Guardian, June 7, 2016. Available at www.theguardian.com/cities/video/2016/jun/07/tehran-iran-artistnazgol-ansarinia-murals-bureau-beautification (accessed March 28, 2018). 20 ICY and SOT, Let Her Be Free: Icy and Sot, Stencil Artists from Iran, 2006–2015 (Amsterdam: Lebowski Publishers, 2016), p. 8. 21 “A1One: An Iranian street artist,” Tracing Art in Public, March 18, 2017. Available at www.tracingartinpublic.com/2017/03/18/profiling-iranian-street-artist-a1one/ (accessed March 28, 2018). 22 Hrag Vartanian, “Rebel without a crew: Street artist A1one in Tehran,” ArtCat Zine, July 21, 2008. Available at zine.artcat.com//2008/07/interview.php (accessed March 28, 2018). 23 Icy and Sot, Let Her Be Free, p. 33. 24 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

Chapter 5 1 John Thabiti Willis, “Man vs. nature: Constructing national identity and heritage,” Paper delivered at the Gulf Research Meeting, Cambridge University, UK, August 2017. 2 Erin Kilbride, “Five years after Bahrain’s revolution, five new ways to protest,” New Internationalist, February 15, 2016. Available at www.newint.org/features/webexclusive/2016/02/15/five-years-after-bahrains-revolution (accessed January 13, 2017). 3 For more on this fascinating ancient culture, see Geoffrey Bibby, Looking for Dilmun (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969) and Michael Rice, “Dilmun discovered: The archaeology of Bahrain to the early second millennium BC,” Asian Affairs 17/3 (1986), pp. 252–63. 4 Justin Gengler, Group Conflict and Political Mobilization in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf: Rethinking the Rentier State (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), pp. 1–3.

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5 Ibid., p. 10. 6 Ibid., p. 139. 7 Frederic Wehrey, “Bahrain’s decade of discontent,” Journal of Democracy 24/3 (2013), pp. 116–26. 8 Rana Jarbou, “Bahrain: The medium and the message,” in Arabic Graffiti, pp. 47–49. 9 Ibid., p. 49. 10 It is interesting to note that the works produced during the Arab Spring, particularly in Egypt, have been routinely referred to as “street art” whereas most of the (limited) commentary on the work in Bahrain described those images as “graffiti” despite their many visual similarities to images produced in Egypt and elsewhere in 2011. 11 For more on the anti-Formula 1 images, as well as on the events of the Bahrain protests and their aftermath, see “Bahrain: The unauthorized tour,” Bahrain Watch, April 2012. Available at www.bahrainwatch.org/tour (accessed April 3, 2018). 12 “The Prosperity Project,” Ink361, n.d. Available at www.ink361.com/app/users/ ig-553578810/theprosperityproject/photos (accessed August 13, 2017). 13 Quentin de Pimodan, The Khaleeji Voice, Artisans of the Arabian Street, Vol. 1: Bahrain (Bahrain: Union Press, 2014), p. 32. 14 Ibid., p. 32. 15 Mai Al Khatib-Camille, “Breaking down barriers through art,” Gulf Weekly, August 15, 2017. Available at www.gulfweekly.com/Articles/37751/Breaking-downbarriers-through-art (accessed September 14, 2017). 16 Ibid. 17 Phil Kirby, “Caught!,” Temple Works Leeds, May 27, 2010. Available at www. templeworksleeds.com/2010/05/27/caught/ (accessed June 29, 2017). 18 De Pimodan, The Khaleeji Voice, p. 32. 19 Ibid., p. 36.

Chapter 6 1 James Worrall, “Oman: The “Forgotten” Corner of the Arab Spring,” Middle East Policy 19/3 (2012), pp. 98–115. 2 Ibid., p. 103. 3 Ibid., p. 107. 4 “Nizwa ‘Capital of Islamic Culture 2015’ programme concludes,” Times of Oman, December 30, 2015. Available at www.timesofoman.com/article/74590/Oman/ Heritage/Nizwa-is-renowned-for-its-ancient-past-which-is-historic-civilised-andrich-at-the-cultural-and-spir (accessed July 13, 2017). 5 “Nizwa Square a picture of art,” Oman Daily Observer, April 14, 2015. Available at www.omanobserver.om/nizwa-square-a-picture-of-art/ (accessed July 13, 2017).

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6 In an article on the opening of the Arts and Culture Square, the work is described as “a special painting in which he [Sonya] has portrayed the auction usually held in the Nizwa Souq. It is a scene that charms the artist whenever he visits Nizwa.” Quoted in “Nizwa Square a picture of art.” 7 “Minister to inaugurate mosque in Nizwa,” Times of Oman, September 16, 2015. Available at www.timesofoman.com/article/67786/Oman/Heritage/Minister-ofthe-Diwan-of-Royal-Court-will-open-the-Sultan-Qaboos-Mosque-in-the-Wilayatof-Nizwa-on-Friday (accessed May 1, 2016). 8 K. A. C. Creswell, “The origin of the Persian double dome,” The Burlington Magazine 24/128 (1913), pp. 94–99. 9 See, for example, www.nizwa.net/agr/dates/nizwadates/nizwadate.html. 10 Luca M. Visconti, “Street art, sweet art? Reclaiming the ‘public’ in public place,” Journal of Consumer Research 37/3 (2010), p. 512. 11 Ibid., p. 518. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., p. 519. 14 Ibid., p. 522. 15 Fakhriya Al-Yahyai, “The significance of Omani identity in the works of Omani painters,” Journal of Arts and Humanities 6/1 (2017), pp. 21–31. 16 Ibid., p. 23. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., p. 29.

Chapter 7 1 Charles Tripp, “Art, power and knowledge: Claiming public space in Tunisia,” Middle East Law and Governance 8 (2016), p. 251. 2 Ibid., pp. 256–7. 3 Ibid., p. 256. 4 Ibid., p. 253. 5 Siobhán Shilton, “Art and the ‘Arab Spring’: Aesthetics of revolution in contemporary Tunisia,” French Cultural Studies 24/1 (2013), p. 130. 6 Ibid., p. 131. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid., p. 142. 9 Noureddine Miladi, “Alternative fabrics of hegemony: City squares and street graffiti as sites of resistance and interactive communication flow,” Journal of African Media Studies 7/2 (2015), p. 133. 10 Institut du Monde Arabe, “Dégagements—La Tunisie un an après,” Institut du Monde Arabe, n.d. Available at www.imarabe.org/fr/expositions/degagements-latunisie-un-an-apres (accessed September 12, 2017).

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11 “Art dissects Tunisia revolution one year on,” Africa Review, February 29, 2012. Available at www.africareview.com/arts-and-culture/Art-dissects-Tunisia-revolutionone-year-on/979194-1356156-5s6dsgz/index.html (accessed September 12, 2017). 12 Wafa Gabsi, “After the storm,” Ibraaz, May 2, 2012. Available at www.ibraaz.org/ interviews/26 (accessed September 10, 2017). 13 Thameur Mekki, “Graffiti in Tunisia: A weapon for civil resistance,” Qantara, January 2012. Available at en.qantara.de/content/graffiti-in-tunisia-a-weapon-forcivil-resistance (accessed September 12, 2017). 14 Ibid. 15 “Rue Lenine: The street art open air gallery in Tunis downtown,” Lost in Tunis, January 29, 2017. Available at www.lostintunis.com/?p=902 (accessed August 15, 2017). 16 Caroline Stone and Kevin Bubriski, “Djerba’s museum of the street,” AramcoWorld 66/1 (2015), p. 12. 17 Rooksana Hossenally, “In Tunisia, something tactile in the ‘Island of Dreams,’” New York Times, September 2, 2014. Available at www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/ arts/international/in-tunisia-something-tactile-in-the-island-of-dreams.html?_r=0 (accessed May 22, 2016). 18 Ibid. 19 Mehdi Ben Cheikh, Djerbahood: Le Musée de Street Art à Ciel Ouvert/Open-Air Museum of Street Art (Paris: Albin Michel Editions, 2015). 20 Ibid., p. 10. 21 Ibid., p. 7. 22 Ibid.

Chapter 8 1 Rafael Schacter, “The ugly truth: Street art, graffiti and the creative city,” Art and the Public Sphere 3/2 (2014), pp. 161–76, p. 162. 2 Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Convergence on the streets: Rethinking the authentic/ commercial binary,” Cultural Studies 45/4&5 (2011), pp. 641–58. 3 Ibid., p. 644. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid., p. 645. 6 Ibid., p. 646. Here Banet-Weiser references Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class and How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002) and Miriam Greenberg, Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World (New York: Routledge, 2008).

Notes 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17

18

19

20 21 22 23

24 25

219

Ibid., p. 653. Schacter, “The ugly truth,” p. 162. Ibid., p. 167. Ibid., pp. 169–70. “Overview,” Wynwood Walls, n.d. Available at www.thewynwoodwalls.com/ overview (accessed January 23, 2016). Schacter, “The ugly truth,” p. 168. “About,” Tashkeel Studio, n.d. Available at www.tashkeel.org/about (accessed March 1, 2016). Anna Seaman, “el Seed’s Dubai exhibition Declaration gives calligraffiti a whole new dimension,” The National, November 17, 2014. Available at www.thenational. ae/arts-lifestyle/art/el-seeds-dubai-exhibition-declaration-gives-calligraffiti-awhole-new-dimension (accessed March 1, 2016). Ibid. Ibid. Anna Seaman, “Sharjah building is canvas for el Seed’s first public artwork in the UAE,” The National, February 15, 2015. Available at www.thenational.ae/artslifestyle/sharjah-building-is-canvas-for-el-seeds-first-public-artwork-in-the-uae (accessed March 1, 2016). Maraya Art Centre, “Poetic wall art by el Seed on Sharjah Bank Street building,” Maraya Art Centre, n.d. Available at www.maraya.ae/index.php?r=site/page&id=3 (accessed March 1, 2016). “Calligraffiti mural by el Seed on the Sharjah Bank Street Building,” Islamic Arts Magazine, February 9, 2015. Available at www.islamicartsmagazine.com/magazine/ view/calligraffiti_mural_by_el_seed_on_the_sharjah_bank_street_building/ (accessed March 1, 2016). Seaman, “Sharjah building is canvas.” “Interview with el Seed,” Fluoro, n.d. Available at www.fluorodigital.com/2015/03/ interview-with-el-seed/ (accessed April 25, 2018). John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 87. Danna Lorch, “Poetry and calligraffiti: El Seed’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton,” Danna Writes, n.d. Available at www.dannawrites.com/poetry-and-calligrafiti-elseeds-collaboration-with-louis-vuitton/ (accessed April 25, 2018). Ibid. For a general discussion of Ali’s work, see the introduction to Taha Muhammad Ali, So What: New and Selected Poems, 1971–2005, trans. Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2006). For the text of “Revenge,” see https://medium.com/poem-of-the-day/taha-muhammad-alirevenge-65e8151ae9d9 (accessed April 25, 2018).

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26 Anna Seaman, “Sheikh Nahyan joins street artist in spray painting of Abu Dhabi’s British embassy wall,” The National, March 11, 2015. Available at www.thenational. ae/arts-lifestyle/art/sheikh-nahyan-joins-street-artist-in-spray-painting-of-abudhabis-british-embassy-wall (accessed March 1, 2016). 27 “Ben Eine: Hand in hand,” Wall Street International, n.d. Available at www.wsimag. com/art/13936-ben-eine-hand-in-hand (accessed March 2, 2016). 28 “Residential spaces ensure designers and artists live steps away from their ateliers. Retail spaces introduce a thriving fashion and design scene to the public while restaurants test new boundaries in gastronomic exploration. Cafes become a nexus for social interaction and the creation of new ideas, and event venues invite the public to share in fashion and design showcases,” From “Our offering,” Dubai Design District, n.d. Available at www.dubaidesigndistrict.com/about-us-2/ouroffering/ (accessed March 2, 2016). 29 Rachel Bennet, “Dubai unveils new design district with three days of festivities at Meet D3,” Wallpaper, April 20, 2015. Available at www.wallpaper.com/design/ dubai-unveils-new-design-district-with-three-days-of-festivities-at-meetD3#UYDT709FWRivbJ01.9 (accessed March 2, 2016). 30 Afshan Ahmed, “The ‘vandal’-turned-street artist Ben Eine comes to Dubai,” The National, November 17, 2015. Available at www.thenational.ae/arts-life/artists/ the-vandal-turned-street-artist-ben-eine-comes-to-dubai (accessed March 1, 2016). 31 Matilda Battersby, “Ben Eine: Street art is a luxury product,” The Independent, December 3, 2014. Available at www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/ features/ben-eine-street-art-is-a-luxury-product-9901002.html (accessed March 6, 2016). 32 “Dubai Canvas Festival opens today,” Emirates 24/7, February 29, 2016. Available at www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/dubai-canvas-festival-openstoday-2016-02-29-1.622703 (accessed March 6, 2017). 33 “About,” The Walk, n.d. Available at www.thewalk.ae/about/ (accessed March 6, 2016). 34 “Dubai Canvas Festival opens today.” 35 Ibid., and Angel Lee Tesorero, “Magical reality meets the eyes at Dubai Canvas Festival,” The Khaleej Times, March 5, 2016. Available at www.khaleejtimes.com/ nation/dubai/magical-reality-meets-the-eyes-at-dubai-canvas-festival (accessed March 6, 2016). 36 B. Hansen, “The history of pavement art,” Kurt Wenner Blog, 2011. Available at www.kurtwenner.com/blog/about/pavement-art-history/ (accessed March 6, 2016). 37 It is perhaps also worth noting that Wenner’s work is shown in galleries outside the general circuit of the contemporary art market, in locations such as the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas and in the Arizona tourist mecca of Sedona.

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38 “Dubai Canvas Festival to feature world’s first cyborg artist,” Dubai Media Office, March 6, 2016. Available at www.mediaoffice.ae/en/press/press-details/15/2/2016/ dubai-canvas-festival-to-feature-worlds-first-cyborg-artist.aspx (accessed March 12, 2017). 39 Stuart Jeffries, “Neil Harbisson: The world’s first cyborg artist,” The Guardian, May 6, 2014. Available at www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/06/neilharbisson-worlds-first-cyborg-artist (accessed March 6, 2016). 40 Jane Aldersley, “Out in the open: Street art back on Dubai’s artistic agenda,” The National, December 18, 2014. Available at www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/ art/out-in-the-open-street-art-back-on-dubais-artistic-agenda (accessed March 8, 2016). The 2,245.4 m wall, titled “Rehlatna” or “Our Journey,” successfully claimed the Guinness World Record for “longest graffiti scroll.” (See www. guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-graffiti-scroll.) 41 Ellen Fortini, “NYU Abu Dhabi presents its first live painting event,” The National, December 6, 2015. Available at www.thenational.ae/blogs/the-art-blog/nyu-abudhabi-presents-its-first-live-painting-event (accessed March 8, 2016). 42 “Introduction to the project,” Al Quoz Project, n.d. Available at www.quozproject. com/ (accessed March 7, 2016). 43 A running tagline on the group’s website states: “We envision a neighborhood where a record of our local and regional artists are [sic] permanently marked on the public landscape.” 44 “Projects to integrate the community through art,” Al Quoz Project, n.d. Available at www.quozproject.com/projects (accessed March 7, 2016). 45 See www.facebook.com/QuozProject/. 46 CDH, “Notes on the commodification of street art,” Art Monthly Australia 263 (2013), pp. 42–44. 47 Ibid., p. 42. 48 “Home,” Dubai Walls, n.d. Available at www.dubaiwalls.com (accessed May 3, 2018). 49 “Artists: Ron English,” Dubai Walls, n.d. Available at www.dubaiwalls.com/artists/ ron-english/ (accessed May 3, 2018). 50 “Artists: Icy and Sot,” Dubai Walls, n.d. Available at www.dubaiwalls.com/artists/ icy-sot/ (accessed May 3, 2018). 51 Icy and Sot, Let Her Be Free, p. 7. 52 “Sheikh Mohammed approves ‘Dubai Street Museum Project,’” Emirates 24/7, November 28, 2016. Available at www.emirates247.com/news/emirates/sheikhmohammed-approves-dubai-street-museum-project-2016-11-28-1.644267 (accessed July 13, 2017). 53 “16 new murals on 2nd December Street,” Gulf News, January 4, 2017. Available at www.gulfnews.com/culture/arts/16-new-murals-on-2nd-decemberstreet-1.1956465 (accessed July 14, 2017).

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Chapter 9 1 There are many excellent summaries of the development and current state of the civil war in Syria; much of the information here is derived from Andrew Tabler, “How Syria came to this,” The Atlantic, April 15, 2018. Available at www.theatlantic. com/international/archive/2018/04/syria-chemical-weapons/558065/ (accessed April 20, 2018). 2 Hussam Eddin, “From one of Syria’s most-bombed cities, street art sends the world a message,” Syria Direct, August 16, 2016. Available at www.syriadirect.org/news/ from-one-of-syria%E2%80%99s-most-bombed-cities-street-art-sends-the-world-amessage-%E2%80%98there-is-always-something-beautiful-waiting-for-us-despiteall-the-pain%E2%80%99/ (accessed April 20, 2018). 3 Phineas Rueckert, “Street artist, called ‘Syrian Banksy,’ is spreading hope in his wartorn country,” Global Citizen, October 27, 2016. Available at www.globalcitizen.org/ en/content/syrian-banksy-spreading-hope-art/ (accessed April 20, 2018). 4 Eddin, “From one of Syria’s most-bombed cities.” 5 Ibid. 6 Brianna Roberts, “Road to Damascus: Australian artist Luke Cornish unveils Syriainspired exhibition,” SBS News, June 9, 2017. Available at www.sbs.com.au/news/ road-to-damascus-australian-artist-luke-cornish-unveils-syria-inspired-exhibition (accessed April 20, 2018). 7 The constant shifts in strategy and loyalties during the Yemen conflict make it difficult to provide a clear and current narrative of the war; however, the BBC has good coverage of the history and current status of the situation; see www.bbc.com/ news/world-middle-east-29319423. 8 In early April 2018, United Nations secretary general António Guterres reported that the Yemen crisis had become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis; see Ewelina U. Ochab, “Yemen became the world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” Forbes, April 5, 2018. Available at www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2018/04/05/yemen-becamethe-worlds-worst-humanitarian-crisis/#2ae726815050 (accessed April 22, 2018). 9 Charlotte Alfred, “Yemeni street artist covers the ruins of war in color and memories,” The Huffington Post, April 22, 2016. Available at www.huffingtonpost. com/entry/yemen-street-artist_us_57193277e4b0d0042da8a374 (accessed April 23, 2018). 10 Ibid. 11 Rosie Bsheer, “On nostalgia and material culture in the Hijaz: An interview with Sarah Al Abdali,” Ahram Online, November 12, 2013. Available at www.english. ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/5/25/86131/Arts—Culture/Visual-Art/On-Nostalgiaand-Material-Culture-in-the-Hijaz-An-.aspx (accessed April 16, 2018). 12 Ibid.

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13 In the UAE, for example, the work of photographer Lamya Gargash explores similar themes. 14 Sarah Malik, “Ms Saffaa, protest art and the fledgling Saudi Arabia women’s rights movement,” The Guardian, November 30, 2016. Available at www.theguardian. com/artanddesign/2016/dec/01/ms-saffaa-on-protest-art-and-iammyownguardiandont-say-saudi-women-dont-have-a-voice (accessed April 16, 2018). 15 Siobhan Hegarty, “‘I am my own guardian:’ Feminist Saudi street artist Saffaa protests sexist law,” Australian Broadcasting Corporation News, October 8, 2017. Available at http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-08/feminist-artist-protests-saudiarabias-male-guardianship-law/9022770 (accessed April 17, 2018). 16 Abeer Mishkhas, “Bringing street art back to the Saudi street,” Asharq Al-Awsat, February 19, 2015. Available at eng-archive.aawsat.com/a-mishkhas/lifestyleculture/bringing-street-art-back-to-the-saudi-street (accessed April 17, 2018). 17 Farah Al-Sharif, “Streets come to life in Saudi Arabia’s first graffiti project,” Arab News, March 1, 2018. Available at www.arabnews.com/node/1256736/saudi-arabia (accessed April 17, 2018). 18 A good introduction to the stele and its significance can be found on the Khan Academy Smarthistory website: Senta German, “Law Code Stele of King Hammurabi,” Smarthistory, August 8, 2015. Available at www.smarthistory.org/hammurabi/ (accessed May 2, 2018). 19 For a discussion of Saddam Hussein’s valorization of the civilization of Babylon and how he repurposed its symbols and archaeological artifacts to support his own claims to power, see Paul Cooper, “Saddam’s ‘Disney for a despot’: How dictators exploit ruins,” BBC Culture, April 20, 2018. Available at www.bbc.com/culture/ story/20180419-saddam-disney-for-a-despot-how-dictators-exploit-ruins (accessed May 2, 2018). Note that the background image is misidentified as a mural showing Saddam with King Nebuchadnezzar when it is actually the painting of him with Hammurabi. 20 For a discussion of the reliefs, see Steven Zucker and Beth Harris, “Ashurbanipal hunting lions,” Smarthistory, December 11, 2015. Available at www.smarthistory. org/ashurbanipal-hunting-lions/ (accessed May 2, 2018). 21 As with the image of Saddam and Hammurabi, this mural has also been mislabeled as showing the dictator riding in a Roman war chariot, an attribution which, if true, would miss the important affiliation of Saddam with another ancient ruler of a territory now part of Iraq. The chariot form is quite clearly Assyrian, as can be seen by comparison with other ancient examples, and it is unlikely that Saddam, with his keen interest in ancient archaeology, would not have been aware of the model for this image. 22 “Home,” The Graffiti of War Project, n.d. Available at www.graffitiofwar.com (accessed May 4, 2018); see also Geoff Ziezulewicz, “Downrange art: Project

224

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24 25

26

27 28

29

30

31

32

Notes showcases paintings, graffiti, other artwork by troops in Iraq, Afghanistan,” Stripes, November 13, 2011. Available at www.stripes.com/downrangeart-project-showcases-paintings-graffiti-other-artwork-by-troops-in-iraqafghanistan-1.160679 (accessed May 4, 2018). The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Trauma and Metamorphosis (Chicago: The National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, 2004) and La Salle University, “Special Collections: The Vietnam War,” La Salle University Library, n.d. Available at library.lasalle.edu/special-collections/vietnam_war_home (accessed May 4, 2018). Janina Struk, Private Pictures: Soldiers’ Inside View of War (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011). For examples of the positive reporting on the project in the international press, see, for example, Tim Albone, “Artists add color to ‘grey’ Baghdad,” The National, December 5, 2008. Available at www.thenational.ae/world/mena/artists-addcolour-to-grey-baghdad-1.507254 (accessed May 5, 2018) and “Baghdad murals,” The Guardian, August 7, 2008. Available at www.theguardian.com/world/ gallery/2008/aug/07/iraq?picture=336307477 (accessed May 5, 2018). Caecilia Pieri, “Walling strategy: Can T-wall murals really beautify the fragmented Baghdad?,” Ibraaz, June 26, 2014. Available at www.ibraaz.org/essays/96/15 (accessed May 5, 2018). Ibid. An article from the Associated Press titled “Iraqi artist protests Trump ban with graffiti” ran in outlets as diverse as Fox News (US), The Daily Mail (UK), and La Frontera (Mexico). Oumayma Omar, “Iraqi artist uses murals to blast Trump’s travel ban,” The Arab Weekly, February 19, 2017. Available at www.thearabweekly.com/iraqi-artist-usesmurals-blast-trumps-travel-ban (accessed May 6, 2018). Perhaps the best known is the young activist Malala Yousafzai, whose outspoken advocacy for women’s rights and education as a teenager resulted in an attack on her by Taliban forces. Other Afghan women’s rights activists include Zainab Fayez, the only female prosecutor in the Afghan attorney general’s office, and human rights campaigner Noorjahan Akbar. Deborah Vankin, “Afghan woman risks all to bring color to war-torn Kabul with her street art and feminist murals,” Los Angeles Times, March 16, 2016. Available at www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-shamsia-hassani-afghanistanstreet-art-20160312-htmlstory.html (accessed May 8, 2018). In addition to the article referenced above, see also, for example, Rajul Punjabi, “Shamsia Hassani: Beauty and the burqa” Of Note Magazine, Winter 2015–16. Available at www.ofnotemagazine.org/2015/12/05/shamsia-hassani/ (accessed May 8, 2018) and Steve Rose, “Shamsia Hassani: ‘I want to colour over the

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bad memories of war,’” The Guardian, September 17, 2014. Available at www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/sep/17/shamia-hassani-i-want-to-colourover-the-bad-memories-of-war (accessed May 8, 2018). 33 Katie Booth, “Afghan graffiti artist risks her life to challenge the burqa under the Taliban,” Women in the World, May 21, 2015. Available at www.womenintheworld. com/2015/05/21/afghan-graffiti-artist-risks-her-life-to-challenge-the-burqa-underthe-taliban/ (accessed May 8, 2018). 34 Noah Charney, “Venice Biennale, punk style: The NSK State Pavilion, for “stateless individuals who are looking for new citizenship,”” Salon, May 14, 2017. Available at www.salon.com/2017/05/14/venice-biennale-punk-style-the-nsk-state-pavilionfor-stateless-individuals-who-are-looking-for-new-citizenship/ (accessed May 8, 2018).

Conclusion 1 “Beautiful barriers: Art and identity along a Belfast ‘peace’ wall,” Anthropology Matters 14/1 (2012), pp. 1–12. 2 Danielle Mackey, “When street art is the only way to survive an urban battleground,” Huck, May 29, 2017. Available at www.huckmagazine.com/perspectives/reportage-2/ el-salvador-graffiti-culture-streets/ (accessed May 1, 2018). 3 Eillie Anzilotti, “The South African artist painting elephants on houses,” CityLab, June 1, 2016. Available at www.citylab.com/life/2016/06/the-south-african-artistpainting-elephants-on-houses/485111/ (accessed April 5, 2018). 4 “The Filipino Street Art Project,” Google Arts and Culture, n.d. Available at artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/gRVA_bFk (accessed April 5, 2018).

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Index A1one 103–4 Al Abdali, Sarah Mohanna 186–90 AbiFarès, Huda 7 Abillama, Ziad 47 Abirached, Zeina 61–2 Adams, Eddie 83 Adams, Guy 75 Agurk 81–3 Alaabar, Mohamed; see Leon D Alfan Sharqy Festival 189–90 Ali, Taha Muhammad 164–5 Ali, Zine El Abidine Ben 38, 137, 140 Alkhas, Hannibal 93–5 American Embassy in Tehran 90–4, 96–7 American University in Cairo 33 American University of Beirut 45 Ansarinia, Nazgol 103 Al-Aqsa Intifada 72 Arabic graffiti 6, 48–50, 52, 62–5, 112 Arab-Israeli War (1948) 165 Arab Spring 1, 4, 6, 14, 17–18, 68, 199, 202–3 Bahrain 107, 110, 112–15 Egypt 21, 28–9, 38, 43 graffiti 7, 9, 12 Oman 123–4, 133 Syria 180 Tunisia 137, 139, 142–3, 151 Yemen 183 Art Dubai 41, 155 Artspace Dubai 166 Artyshow Gallery 144 Al-Assad, Asma 38 Al-Assad, Bashar 38, 55, 180 Al-Asaad, Khaled 182 ASHEKMAN 50–1, 64–5 Ashura 99–100 Ashurbanipal 191–2 Avenue Bourguiba (Tunis) 139, 143, 147 Awad, Alaa 33–4, 39–40

Bacharach, Sondra 10 Al-Bahadli, Arkan 195–6 Baki, Sami Abdel 54 Bakr, Ammar Abo 26–7, 31–4, 37–9, 43 Balfour, Arthur James 70 Banet-Weiser, Sarah 156–7 Banksy 18–19 anonymity 157 Banksy effect 75–6, 149–50, 173 Gaza 75–6, 161 influence on other artists 103–4, 119, 140, 156, 167, 181 Palestine 72–4, 77–8, 81, 114, 161 Santa’s Ghetto 74–5 stencils 23, 49, 114 Barjeel Art Foundation 42–4 Basquiat, Jean-Michel 3–4, 50 beautification 89, 100, 108, 184, 194; see also Tehran Beautification Organization Behest-e Zahra Cemetery 98 Belfast (Northern Ireland) 93, 194, 201 Ben Gurion, David 70 Benjamin, Walter 47–8 Bereni, Bilal; see Zoo Project Berlin Wall 57 Blek Le Rat 104, 175 Bouazizi, Mohamed 137–8 Boulard, Dima 61 Braque, Georges 131 Buchakjian, Gregory 57, 59 Bu Sneeda, Ahmed 163 calligraffiti 4, 62, 103, 162 Cameron, David 166 Casbah Square (Tunis) 137–9 CDH 173–4 Chalfant, Henry 2–3 Cheikh, Mehdi Ben 148–52 Cheikh, Selim Ben 138 Christian iconography 35–6, 38 City Walk Dubai 174–5

244

Index

clothing 60–1, 80, 83, 114, 118, 126–7, 175, 197 commodification of street art 5, 9–10, 40–41, 49–50, 61, 85, 105, 117, 146, 156–8, 164–5, 167, 174–6, 182 Cooper, Martha 2–3 Cornish, Luke; see E.L.K. counter-monuments 29–30 Crescenzi, Giacomo 41 cultural identity 135 Curry, Caledoni; see Swoon Daumier, Honoré 37 David, Jacques-Louis 191 El Degham, Hanaa 33 Deitch, Jeffrey 4 Dema-One 145 De Pimodan, Quentin 117, 119 D*Face 175 Dippie, Owen 173 Djerbahood 67, 137, 148–53 Dobrowolski, Igor 185 Douaihy, Saliba 45 Dubai Canvas Festival 168–70 Dubai Design District (D3) 155, 166 Dubai Walls 173–5, 190 Ecclestone, Bernie 114 Effat, Sheikh Emad 31–2, 37 Efflatoun, Inji 40 Elias, Chad 25 E.L.K. 182 Elmoshir, Mohamed 35 English, Ron 85, 174–5 Ewais, Hamed 40 Fahmy, Mohamed; see Ganzeer Faile 85 Fairey, Shepard 22, 49, 119, 156 Falko One 201–2 Fisher, Jean 139 Fisk, Robert 91 Florida, Richard 156 Formula 1 113–14, 116 Free Syrian Army 181 Galerie Itinerrance Paris 148 Ganzeer 21, 24–5, 27, 29, 41, 43, 55, 157, 180

Gengler, Justin 109–10 Gerz, Jochen 29 Ghadyanloo, Mehdi 101–3 Gharbi, Mouin; see Meen-One Ghost Bike Project 66 Glissant, Édouard 139 Globepainter, Seth 177 Gopnik, Blake 12–13 Graffiti of War Project 193 Grigor, Talinn 96 Gröndhal, Mia 42 Gruber, Christiane 89, 100 Hadi, Abdrabbuh Mansour 183 Halwani, Yazan 62–3 Hamdy, Basma 21, 30, 34 Hammurabi 191 Harbisson, Neil 169–70 Haring, Keith 3–4, 50 Harnett, William 132 Harvey, Ellen 67 Hashash, Mahmoud Abu 84 Hassan, Ahmed Aboul 33 Hassani, Shamsia 197–9 heritage 22–3, 34, 39, 53, 107, 117, 119–21, 126, 135–6, 151, 169, 176–8, 186–7, 191 Hizbollah 55–6, 203 Hoayek, Yussef 54 Hossenally, Rooksana 150 Howard Griffin Gallery 102 Hussein, Saddam 190 Hussein, Sinan 120 Huvil 116–19 Ibrahim, Samira 26–7, 43 ICY and SOT 103–5, 175 Institut du Monde Arabe 144 Iranian Revolultion (1979) 89–91; see also Islamic Revolution Iran-Iraq War 89, 98 Islamic art 7, 31, 80, 93–4, 96, 126–7, 167 Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (IESCO) 124 Islamic faith 7, 32, 38, 88, 97, 101, 112, 129 Islamic Revolution 93, 95, 98, 202 Jarbou, Rana 111 January 25 revolution

21, 25, 30

Index Jasmine Revolution 140, 145, 147, 150 Jerusalem, Old City; see Muslim Quarter Jessel, Marc 166 Johns, Jasper 95 Jones, Jonathan 102 Kabbani, Mohamed; see ASHEKMAN Kabbani, Omar; see ASHEKMAN Kader, Abdel 150 Karbala 97–8, 112 Karl, Don; see Stone Karooh, Abdulmajeed 132 Kennard, Peter 75 Keszler Gallery 75 Khaled, Belal 76 Khaled, Leila 83–4 Al-Khalifa, King Hamad 114 Khatami, Mohammad 100 Khatib, Lina 21 Khediri, Hafedh; see SK-One Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 90, 96, 98, 190 El Khoury, Jad 56–8, 182 Kiefer, Anselm 59 Know Hope 78–9 Krifa, Michket 145 Krohn, Zia 78 Kruger, Barbara 189 Laden, Osama bin 196 Lagerweij, Joyce 78 Latuff, Carlos 114 Lawrence, T.E. 69 Lebanese Civil War 46, 51, 60, 66, 180 Leila Heller Gallery 4, 8, 38, 41, 62 Leon D 116–17, 119 Libera, Zbigniew 57 Lichtenstein, Roy 95 Liebeskind, Daniel 30 Lin, Maya 30, 77 Magritte, René 8 El-Mahdy, Aliaa 26–7, 43 Al Maktoum, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid 169, 176 Maraya Art Centre 163 Marcos, Ferdinand 38 Marcos, Imelda 38

245

martyrs 28–36, 53, 83–4, 89, 97–100, 114, 137, 142–3 Port Said martyrs 32–3 Mater, Ahmed 188 Mazzacurati, Marino 54 Mecca 86–8, 98, 186–8 Meen-One 144–6 memorials 30, 34, 42, 53–5, 56–60, 77, 182, 184 memory 18, 29–30, 48, 56–60, 62 Mexican Muralism 22, 96 Miladi, Noureddine 139 Minelli, Filippo 81–2 Mohamed Mahmoud Street 31–4, 36–7, 39, 42 Moneo, Rafael 46 Moraya, Soraya 23, 40 Morsi, Mohamed 30, 36 Moscatello, Giuseppe 164 Mubarak, Hosni 21, 24, 27–30, 32, 36–7, 41, 137 Mubarak, Suzanne 38 Muslim Brotherhood 33 Muslim Quarter (Old City of Jerusalem) 86–8 Al Nahyan, Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak 166 Nasser, Ayad 66 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 28 Nefertiti 23, 25–6, 35, 52–3 Netanyahu, Benjamin 38 Netanyahu, Sara 38 Norwich, John Julius 165 Nye, Joseph 136 Obama, Barack 92, 108, 166 Oliphant, Pat 37 Orozco, José Clemente 22, 96 Oslo Accords 72 Al-Otaibi, Maryam 189 Ottoman Empire 53, 70 Pahlavi, Farah 90 Pahlavi, Mohamed Reza 90, 93, 95–6 Palestine Liberation Organization 72 Parry, William 77–8 Pasha, Jamal 53 Pearl Roundabout 30, 107, 112, 114

246 Performance 143, 170–3 Philadelphia Mural Arts Program 67 Picasso, Omar 36–7 Picasso, Pablo 85, 131, 174–5 Pieri, Caecilia 194 political cartoons 37, 114, 195–6 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine 83 post-colonialism 139 Powers, Lynn 4–5 propaganda 91, 95 protest art 1, 94, 138 public art 8–11, 13, 42, 138 public space; see urban space Pugh, John 102 Qabbani, Nazir 163 Qalandiya Checkpoint 78 Al-Qassemi, Sultan Sooud 42–3 Al Quoz Beautification Project 171–2 Rabin, Yitzhak 72 Rafi, Samir 40 reclamation 67, 155–6 refugees 143–4 revolution 22–3, 34, 51–2, 68, 87, 108, 112, 137–8, 146 Richter, Gerhard 59 Riggle, Nicholas 11 Rihani, Amin 45 Rivera, Diego 22, 96 Al Riwaq Art Space 118, 120 Romissi, Faten 138 Rosenquist, James 57 Rosenthal, Joe 91 Rothschild, Walter 70 Rue Lenine (Tunis) 147–8 Saadiyat Island (Abu Dhabi) 155 Al Said, Sultan Qaboos bin Said 124 Salah, Gaber 35 Saleeby, Khalil 45 Saleh, Ali Abdullah 183 Saleh, Tala F. 51–2 Al-Salimi, Hamad 126–7 Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin 189 Sarchet, Byron 194

Index Al Sarkal, Marwan 164 Al-Saud, Princess Abeer bint-Faisal 190 Al-Sayegh, Mohammed 130 Scarfe, Gerald 37 Schacter, Rafael 2, 11, 155, 158–61 Schneeman, Carolee 43 eL Seed 4, 161–5, 202, 203 calligraffiti 7–8, 62, 103, 112, 119 Djerbahood 149–51 separation barrier between Israel and Palestine 57, 69, 72–4, 76–85 Shalev-Gerz, Esther 29 Al-Shami, Abu Malek 181–2 Al-Shargawi, Mahmood; see Huvil Sharon, Ariel 72 El Shazly, Yasmin 39 Shehab, Bahia 41 Shilton, Siobhán 138 Simmons, Laurie 57 Siquieros, David Alfaro 22, 96 el-Sisi, Abdel Fattah 24 SISKA 48–51 Six-Day War (1967) 17, 71 SK-One (Hafedh Khediri) 144–6 Socialist Realism 96 social media 19, 24–6, 42–4, 82 soft power; see Joseph Nye Solidere 46–7, 54 Somerville, Kristine 9 Sonya, Anwar 128–9, 131 Spanhake, Shannon 67 St+Art Foundation 18 Station 16 Gallery 41 Stone 6–7, 21, 76 street art collectives Ahl al-Khaf 137 Chain Effect 66 Dihzayhners 65 Gerilya 202 Prosperity Project 114–15 REK 50–1 Revolution Artists Union 27, 137 ZIT (Zombie Intervention Tunisie) 137 street art festivals 11, 145, 155, 158, 166, 168–71, 189 Street Art Gallery (Dubai) 160

Index Street Art Night 171–2 street art techniques poster 22, 27, 55, 79, 84, 96 stencil 23–5, 51–2, 86–8, 104, 112, 182, 187 sticker 22, 24–5 wheatpaste 1, 79–80, 115, 119, 188 Street Museum (Dubai) 176, 178 Struk, Janina 193 Subay, Murad 183–5 Suliman, Malina 197–8 Al Suwaidi, Shaima 176 Swoon 79–81, 85 Sykes-Picot Agreement 69–70 tagging 3, 5, 83, 152 Tahrir Square (Cairo) 10, 21, 23, 25–8, 30, 32–3, 35, 37, 41, 137 Talaat Harb Square (Cairo) 29 Tannich, Anis 150 Tantawi, Mohamed Hussein 36–7 Tashkeel 163 Tehran Beautification Organization 100–1 Temple Works Art Space 119 El Teneen 21 Tlili, Sélim 138 tourism 65, 75, 77, 81, 138, 147–8, 151, 175, 189 Trebelsi, Leila 38 Tripp, Charles 137–8 Truman, Harry S. 70 Trump, Donald 15, 92, 195–6 Tunan, Hua 177

247

United States Embassy in Tehran; see American Embassy in Tehran urban renewal; see reclamation urban space 14–16, 25, 62, 67, 86–8, 108, 126, 134–5, 137, 139, 156 Van Erven, Joy 81, 83 Visconti, Luca 134 Volk, Lucia 54 Warhol, Andy 3, 95 Wenner, Kurt 169 Willis, John Thabiti 108 Witz, Dan 67 women; see also Nefertiti in art 23, 25–6, 34–6, 40, 114–15, 126–7, 142, 181 artists 41–3, 79–80, 186–9, 197–9 gender roles 35, 43, 80, 128, 197 women’s rights 115, 188–9, 197 Worrall, James 124 Wright, Oliver 46 Wynwood Walls (Miami) 85, 155, 159–61 Xinghua, Qi

169

Yahmed, Bahri Ben 138 Al-Yahyai, Fakhriya 135–6 Yekutieli, Adam; see Know Hope El Zeft 25 Ziade, May 45 Zionist 70 Zoghbi, Pascal 6–7, 76–7 Zoo Project 137, 140–4