Stylogeny combining Chilean Estallido Social Graphics × Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art

Try

Style combination · Contrasts

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics × Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art

Cairo and Santiago both put the eye patches of protesters shot in the eye on their walls and answered every whitewash with new work, but Cairo's martyr murals are brushed portraits beside Pharaonic friezes, while Santiago's are layered paper, stencil and punk iconoclasm.

From the research on Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20)

Mix them and make something Chilean Estallido Social Graphics Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art

NO!Chilean Estallido × Egyptian Revolutionary
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art, their arrangement from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics, the finish from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

01

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20) Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)

Type from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics
Colour from Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art
Form from Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art
Composition from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics
Surface from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Chilean Estallido Social Graphics

No!

Sedgwick Ave Display, standing in for Brushed and spray-painted capitals of the rayados on walls, shutters and hoardings ('ESTADO VIOLADOR / Vamos a cobrar' in heavy black brush letters on red), with the street's spellings such as 'KLLE' for calle and 'kiltro' for quiltro

Text · Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art

The street art of Egypt's 2011 revolution and the years after it, when Cairo's walls, above all around Tahrir and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became what Ammar Abo Bakr called a newspaper. Three idioms share them: portraits of martyrs with wings and eye patches; neo-Pharaonic friezes of mourning and marching women by Luxor-trained muralists; and sardonic caricatures, stencils and Arabic slogans against the army, Mubarak and later Morsi. Whitewashed again and again, the walls were repainted in reply.

Newsreader; Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art used Freehand Arabic slogans in spray paint and marker, sometimes with English lines, scrawled beside and over the pictures and Historical lām-alif ('no') forms collected from buildings, mosques, ceramics, textiles and books across the Islamic world, sprayed by Bahia Shehab

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art, with a counter-accent from Chilean Estallido Social Graphics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20) Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)

  • #ede7da ground · 36%
  • #161616 ink · 14%
  • #c8102e accent · 18%
  • #c8963e accent · 14%
  • #1f4fa0 accent · 10%
  • #a2482b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #ede7da;
  --ink: #161616;
  --accent-1: #c8102e;
  --accent-2: #c8963e;
  --accent-3: #1f4fa0;
  --accent-4: #a2482b;
  --font-display: "Sedgwick Ave Display", cursive;
  --font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}

Use it with care

Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20): This is the work of a living movement made under real repression: by the end of January 2020 the INDH had counted 427 people with eye injuries at the hands of the police, and some 460 eye injuries by mid-March, and protesters such as Gustavo Gatica were blinded, so do not use bleeding or patched eyes, victims' portraits or the red-kerchiefed dog as edgy styling, merchandise or a brand backdrop. Its imagined executions of named, living politicians (hanged effigies and photomontages), its posters calling for police to be set on fire ('LOS PACOS SON INFLAMABLES', 'FUEGO A LA YUTA') and slogans such as 'matapacos' ('cop-killer') and 'ACAB' are documents of rage, not tropes to reuse; the Wenufoye belongs to the Mapuche people and stands for their own political cause, so do not use it as decoration. Most makers were anonymous and the revolt is still contested in Chile, where in 2022 a UDI deputy said he would summon the culture minister over an exhibition of its art; do not attribute unsigned works to named people, and never present a generated image as a work of the revolt.

Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals): These walls commemorate real people killed or maimed in 2011–13, whose families are alive, alongside images of women assaulted by security forces, Qur'anic verses and Coptic and Islamic sacred imagery; do not reuse martyr portraits, eye patches or the 'blue bra' as edgy protest styling for a brand, have every Arabic line read by a fluent reader, and credit the artists and photographers by name. The walls were also religiously contested: Awad painted some of his Pharaonic women nude as a stand against the Wahhabi style of Islam, and Salafists erased some martyr portraits and put Qur'anic verses in their place, so do not pair those figures with Qur'anic verses for effect. After July 2013 the interim government built its own martyrs' memorial in Tahrir, which protesters wrecked, and the Muslim Brotherhood staked its own claim to the revolution's dead, so check whose dead a reused martyr motif would seem to mourn. Political street art remains dangerous in Egypt: Ganzeer was detained in 2011, four graffiti artists were detained for 12 hours in May 2015 after painting a mural, and 400 copies of Walls of Freedom were confiscated in Alexandria for allegedly 'inciting violence', so never put Egyptian artists or collaborators at risk with work attributed to them.

04

The two styles

A distressed protest poster centres a woman looking upward with a raised fist, surrounded by masked demonstrators, red and blue flags, apartment buildings, red flowers and a flying bird. Large rough lettering across the top reads “OTRO MAÑANA” amid torn-looking patches of red, purple, blue, black and cream. 2019–2022 · Latin America & Caribbean Chilean Estallido Social Graphics (Revuelta Popular of 2019–20) The street graphics of Chile's popular revolt, from 18 October 2019 to the March 2020 lockdowns, when a leaderless movement covered Santiago's Plaza de la Dignidad, the Alameda and other cities' walls. Photocopied paste-ups, stencils, linocuts, brushed murals, painted cloth banners and sprayed slogans pile into palimpsests, pasted again as soon as they are painted out. A small shared stock of signs recurs, above all the black riot dog Negro Matapacos in his red kerchief and the wounded eye, beside black-humoured attacks on power and many-coloured shrines to the dead and wounded. A distressed, Egyptian-inspired illustrated poster centres on a young man with an eye bandage, a red halo and outspread multicoloured wings beneath the words “STILL HERE.” Military portraits, riot police, a funeral procession, Egyptian deities, flowers and birds fill the surrounding ochre, red, blue and black composition. 2011–2014 · Middle East & North Africa Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals) The street art of Egypt's 2011 revolution and the years after it, when Cairo's walls, above all around Tahrir and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became what Ammar Abo Bakr called a newspaper. Three idioms share them: portraits of martyrs with wings and eye patches; neo-Pharaonic friezes of mourning and marching women by Luxor-trained muralists; and sardonic caricatures, stencils and Arabic slogans against the army, Mubarak and later Morsi. Whitewashed again and again, the walls were repainted in reply.

05

More combinations

With Chilean Estallido Social Graphics

With Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art

Every style combination