Paris Peace Accords 23 Oct. 1991

Friday, April 8, 2016

Postcards from Cairo

perception mural

An artist created a giant mural across 50 buildings in Cairo without the government noticing

Tech Insider | 30 March 2016

eL Seed says he first hatched the idea for the mural on April 2 of last year. "I sent a WhatsApp message to my friend saying we should do this crazy thing," he tells Tech Insider.

Amid Cairo's brick buildings and heaping piles of trash is a sprawling work of art, which, at first, looks messy and incoherent. 

But when you stand on the nearby hillside and read the spray-painted Arabic "calligraffiti," as its creator Tunisian-French artist eL Seed calls it, the message reads loud and clear: "If one wants to see the light of the sun, he must wipe his eyes."


The quote represents the importance of withholding judgment of people just because of their circumstances, says eL Seed, who first visited the community a few years ago. He's called the piece "Perception" for just that reason, hoping to get people to see past the area's physical appearance. 

Before he and 20 others set to work on the project just outside downtown Cairo, in the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood, the area was mostly a nondescript slum.



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