Street Art

A globally diffuse contemporary movement that found new urgency in the Arab world after the 2011 uprisings, when graffiti walls in Cairo's Mohamed Mahmoud Street, Tunis's Avenue Bourguiba, and central Beirut became some of the most-watched spaces of public expression on the planet. Artists like Egypt's Ganzeer, Tunisia's eL Seed, and Lebanon's Yazan Halwani built international reputations producing work that fused political protest, Arabic calligraphy, and bold figurative imagery. Street art remains the most public and democratic of contemporary Arab art forms — created in the open, addressed to anyone passing by, and inseparable from the cities and historical moments that produced it.