Shepard Fairey, Obey Giant, 2011.

tyranny has a witness

American street artist Shepard Fairey seems to have the flair to detect important political shifts. In 2008, with his HOPE poster of then presidential candidate Barack Obama, he created an icon. Now the HOPE portrait is part of the permanent collection at the US National Portrait Gallery.

This year, it’s the turn of the Arab world to have an icon or rather “a witness”. Instead of a presidential candidate Fairey used the portrait of a young veiled woman that embodies the changing times.

For this new illustration, the artist used an image (accessible in our online archive by clicking here) from Yuri Kozyrev who has covered the Arab Spring revolts in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya extensively.

The picture shows a young woman who along with millions of Egyptian citizens went to the streets in Cairo asking for the end of the thirty-year corrupted presidency of the Hosni Mubarak regime. The picture was taken in February, three days before Mubarak decided to resign.

The caption of the image reads:

Among the thousands of people who had never been to a protest before was Fatma (16), who had finally persuaded her parents to let her go. "When I saw internet activist Wael Ghonim [on television]," she says, "I really got affected by his words and understood that a lot of people suffered in this revolution. I really wanted to be part of it and support it. I wanted to join for Egypt, because I didn't want the people who had died, and the ones who had protested every day, to pay the price alone for what all Egyptians would benefit from." Yuri Kozyrev for Time, February 2011.

Mubarak gone, Egypt has now entered its second revolution. Those who started the protests a year ago want real change and the end of the military rule that is in place since February 2011.

A political process has started with parliamentary elections and it’s an important moment for all the democratic forces to remain mobilized.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is one on them. Fairey’s new poster "Tyranny Has A Witness" will be on sale tomorrow in an edition of 450, measures 18x24", signed and numbered. Some of the proceedings will go to HRW.

See here for more details: obeygiant.com

As for us at NOOR, who have been closely following the dramatic as well as inspiring uprising movements in the Arab world, we make the wish that this image will one day become the symbol of a strong, settled democracy in Egypt.