“ The accessories of the regime” by Kiezer, Cairo, Egypt
Today we will talk about a particular piece of art, a piece entitled "The accessories of the regime", it comes from Egypt. This artwork was stenciled by an egyptian street artist called Kiezer on one of the Zamalek district's walls. This piece was done in 2012, during the egyptian revolution which opposed the egyptian people against the regime of Hosni Moubarak and then Mohamed Morsi's one. This work represents some of the weapons that have been used by these regimes against the people during the Arab Spring. These weapons are undoubtedly torture instruments, their are rifles, handcuffs, tear gas, knifes, truncheons, sabres...Under all the weapons stenciled on the wall, a inscription in arabic is written: "The accessories of the regime". We asked an art critic a few questions on this new street artist who is getting famous by his revolutionnary works and especially the one that caught our attention: "The accessories of the regime"
" Who is Kiezer?" " Kiezer is an egyptian street artist, he is from Cairo. He started stencilling and painting on the walls of Cairo during the revolution. He said graffiti allowed him to express his "frustrations about the injustice and the opposition". Just as Banksy, Kiezer is the pseudonym used by this egyptian street artist to remain anonymous and to protect himself from the authority. In addiction, Kiezer is seen as the new Banksy, he is called the egyptian Banksy or the the king of egyptian street artist. Thus, Kiezer has several things in common with Banksy, not only he use the same techniques as the british artist ( stencilling and spray-cans) but also he is against capaitalism, he use a very satirical way and a dark humour to denounce what happens in the society. Kiezer usually use ants in his paintings, he said that "ants symbolize the working-class which is victim of capitalism but also the fogotten and quiet ones. the worker ants work for their queen ant, it's like a monarchy. However it's time for these persons to overthrow their queen."
"How do you analyse this work?" " This artwork has been done to denounce the violent methods used by the authority during the egyptian revolution. this piece was stencilled in the Zamalek district which is a white collars district so I think that Kiezer wanted to open the eyes of this category of people who do not know what a revolution is."
" Since the beginning of the Arab Spring, we notice the apparition of street art not only in Egypt but also Tunisia, Syria and Libya, How do you explain this phenomenon?" " As I said before, Street art is a form of expression; it doesn't matter if it is in Syria, Egypt or France but what does really matter is that the Arab Spring brought a wave of freedom to these populations who started express theirselves on the walls of their cities.