Last week, as he made a bid to become Egypt’s latest dictator, plunging the country into a constitutional crisis, and drawing new crowds to Tahrir Square, TIME magazine interviewed Mohamed Morsi. The ‘exclusive’ interview took the title ‘We’re Learning How to Be Free’ — which, in light of Morsi’s recent attempt to grant himself un-democratic […]
I’m still mulling over the Openforum 2012 conference, which took place a few weeks ago in Cape Town. The meeting’s theme was ‘Money, Power and Sex: the paradox of unequal growth’. The meeting brought together an interesting collection of artists, activists, academics and technocrats for a pretty open-ended conversation. One of the panels was titled […]
Nadine Hammam is an Egyptian artist making work around the embattled domain of the female body. We speak as she works on a series which will go to Art Dubai at the end of March.* This, she tells me, addresses “political issues and gender issues, using the female nude”. Gender is one of the Egypt […]
One year ago Mostapha El-Shafey took this now iconic photo of a protestor, Abdulrahman Ezz, confronting police in Meydan Tahrir. Today, Egyptians aim to take back Tahrir and the revolution. There will be many more photos and videos of bravery, of violence, of fear and of triumph. As I now reflect on my thoughts from last […]
It was a great year, maybe one of the best ever, for direct action in-the-streets in-your-face pro-democracy movements, and they were largely pushed and pulled by women. Starting with Tunisia, food uprisings spread quickly to Egypt, Algeria, and elsewhere across the continent. Sometimes, big men were pushed out.
