Enviro journalist & researcher, think tanker @ The Wilson Center & @ Center for Climate & Security, Author of 'The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence'
published on Le Monde Diplomatique on Jan 19, 2015
The Arab Spring revitalised Egypt’s cultural scene. But now everyone is weary, broke and scared.
Few images from the 18 days of revolution in Egypt’s 2011 Arab Spring were more powerful than Cairo’s patchwork of street murals — Cleopatra in a gas mask, mash-ups of Hosni Mubarak’s face. On Mohammed Mahmoud Street, activists and artists transformed an unremarkable, dust-caked thoroughfare just off Tahrir Square into an experimental canvas with eight-foot portraits of the dead, and city block-long displays.
But now these artworks look tired. Some slogans critical of the old regime have been scrawled over; the angelic wings of a martyr have been clipped with pink paint. A troll has daubed the IS black flag and a picture of Egypt’s new president, Abdel Fattah Sissi, opposite the dented gates of the old American University in Cairo campus.
Those who want a return to stability are happy that Egypt’s brief burst of revolutionary fervour has passed. But for Cairo’s artistic community, which was energised by the expansion of public space, the re-emergence of the security state means great uncertainty. “You’re always on edge now. Sissi’s been in power for less than a year, so people are still feeling the ground to see what is acceptable and what is not,” said Joseph Fahim, who until recently was programme director for the Cairo International Film Festival, which this year held its 36th edition in the 1980s opera house (1).
Since the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government led by Mohammed Morsi and the deaths of many hundreds of his supporters last summer, the new military-backed administration has quickly silenced Islamist, and some outspoken liberal, voices. Even uncontroversial cultural institutions feel the general unease. “We might wake up tomorrow with a new law that bans people from driving yellow cars,” said Dalia Suleiman, managing director of the Contemporary Image Collective, which exhibits and teaches photography and other digital media.
Most artists and organisations lack the public profile to create a stir, but some film, musical and literary celebrities have overstepped the mark in denouncing Sissi, and suffered for it. Singer Hamza Namira has reportedly had his music banned on state-owned radio. Film star Khaled Aboul Naga was charged with treason for posting a video critical of Sissi. Ramy Essam, whose song Erhal! (Leave!) was the soundtrack of the revolution, is in self-imposed exile in Sweden, as he is unable to perform at home.
Galleries and exhibition spaces aren’t in the authorities’ sights — their audience is too small — but they’re fearful of the effects of the NGO law, which threatens to regulate the financing of civil society institutions. (All NGOs are required to register under a previously lapsed Mubarak-era law.) “It could make it really dangerous to accept foreign funds. It puts independent cultural spaces in a complicated position,” said Amy Arif, an exhibition coordinator.
Already, the possibility of a prohibition on donations from abroad has persuaded one of Egypt’s flagship artistic bodies, El-Mawred El-Thaqafy (the Cultural Resource), to shut its Cairo offices and end its grants for galleries and individual artists. Other cultural associations, including Bad El-Bahr (Beyond The Sea), which worked to expand literary and artistic ties across the Mediterranean, have been forced to freeze their activities. “We were funded by the European Union, and now it’s impossible to get money,” said Stefania Angarano, who also runs the Mashrabia Gallery.
Ahmed el-Attar, a theatre director and the artistic head of the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (DCAF), is despondent at El-Mawred’s closure. He feels its relocation to Tunis threatens Cairo’s cultural bone fides and might dissuade international artists from visiting, when it ought to be seeking to attract talent from across the Middle East. “It was serving the entire Arab world and by deterring these people from coming, they’re cutting us from our roots,” he said. “We should be hosting Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian artists ... because they enrich our cultural life.”
With El-Mawred gone, Egyptian artists have even fewer potential sources of support when there are funding troubles at every level of the arts scene. The culture ministry has never been in a position to back anyone, and the economic crisis has scarcely left it with a budget to maintain its crumbling headquarters in the affluent Zamalek district.
Even in better times, some galleries struggled to make a profit, but now they’re having a rough ride. Sales at Safarkhan, Egypt’s oldest gallery, which dates from the 1960s, are down by more than half, while Mashrabia has been hamstrung by its prominent downtown location, with frequent road closures and protests. Other galleries have been unable to withstand three years of flux and the absence of tourists, and have gone out of business.
The unsettled job market has been unkind to art students. “There’s no work at home. Nobody has any money, and art is a luxury. It’s tough to survive,” said Mohammed el-Boghdady, who left to find work in France and Dubai before returning to Cairo. He says digital media and visual artists have been leaving fast, mostly for the Gulf. Most of the team behind the hugely popular Bassem Youssefshow, which was forced off television this year after the comedian’s political satire offended the authorities, are still unemployed. There are no jobs and, in some areas, less creativity. The poor economy and fear of further instability have demoralised Egypt, and this is reflected in more limited art. “There is no desire to invest in art, so there’s no competition and no motivation,” said El-Boghdady.
Safarkhan owner Sherwet Shafei thinks the artistic impasse might result from the revolution’s failure to generate change. “The successful freedom of expression didn’t last, it didn’t succeed. There was a lot of creativity in graffiti, but it faded away. I often ask why, but I think maybe they didn’t feel they left their impression on the world.”
For many artists and performers this uncertainty is not new. The expectation that former president Morsi would bow to his ultra-conservative allies and introduce hardline social policies when he consolidated power was enough to panic many in the community. But the current situation strongly echoes Mubarak’s presidency, when the cultural scene was checked by his regime’s strictures, and only explored its boundaries in his twilight years. “We’re back in a zone we know really well. You’re threatened, but you’re not in real danger. You’re constantly negotiating your space and expression. Some of the parameters are different now, but the general feeling is the same,” said DCAF’s Ahmed el-Attar.
For the past three years, his festival has brought three weeks of dance, theatre and music performances to the manic city centre streets. It’s designed to boost the public and show them the diversity of Egyptian life, and all performances involve extensive audience participation — including four next year in which spectators will be actors. But even with quite apolitical content, things have become trickier. In 2012, the ministry of interior rushed through the necessary permits. In 2013, with the Muslim Brotherhood in power, it was greenlighted, but warned it would be on its own if anything went wrong. This year, El-Attar was almost forced to call off the first performances as the police hadn’t yet granted a licence to perform in the streets.
Many find it hard to look much beyond the grim — though slowly improving — economy and the clampdown on civil liberties. Bureaucratic disputes abound, and pervasive social conservatism still renders some topics taboo, as the team behind the belly dancing Al-Rakesa television show discovered over the summer. The producers found Egypt’s leading religious institutions had filed 14 lawsuits against them for lewd content and damage to public morality (they were knocked off television for three weeks).
Some have been caught up in the government’s suppression of street protests. Omar Hazek, a poet and former employee of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, is serving a two-year sentence in an Alexandria prison after he was arrested while demonstrating.
There are signs of hope. A few prominent state arts institutions, including the Mahmoud Said Museum in Alexandria, have re-opened after extended closures, while small, informal galleries, like the Nile Sunset Annex, are popping up in private apartments around Cairo. Many gallery owners also continue to push the bounds of acceptability with bold explorations of sexual and religious themes. Independent filmmakers are producing challenging work and showing it at the film festival, and the hope is that their material will filter down to more accessible and widely consumed entertainment.
There’s a sense too that, having helped topple a president, the arts can be instrumental in pushing the new regime towards tolerance. “Back then, it was depressing. It’s been dim and hopeless before, but we went on pushing under Mubarak, and we’ll go on pushing now,” said Ahmed el-Attar.