Graffiti was part of the 25 January Revolution from the start. From the movie stars and quotations that mocked the political status quo down to the faces of the martyrs on the streets, the walls told it all. Women's issues and women's rights have also been reflected on the walls. When Cairo's downtown walls were flooded with images of Om Kalthoum and words from her famous song “Patience has its Limits”, one also saw images of the famous movie icon Soad Hosni and feminist messages among the graffiti motifs. Adopting this same line of thought, the Women On Walls (WOW) project is focusing on women's empowerment through feminist graffiti, as well as by giving women artists a chance to create images for the city's walls. It is striking to see graffiti of a pregnant young woman with the back of the image mimicking machinery and the message “women are not machines, think before you bring more kids into this life.” Since December 2012, WOW has been articulating women's issues on the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Mansoura and Luxor. Through graffiti, the group has brought women's issues that were previously often only spoken about behind closed doors or in conferences to the people on the streets, creating awareness through appeals painted on walls. WOW stands out from other graffiti movements because it empowers women by portraying their messages, and it also helps young female artists and designers to be part of the streets arts movement. Following the 25 January Revolution, the graffiti movement witnessed projects like “Harimi graffiti” with its Soad Hosni and Om Kalthoum graffiti, the first of its kind, and such projects were an important step to make women more visible on the walls. However, the work of these early projects was limited, and it was mostly painted by male graffiti artists, according to Mia Grondahl, a Swedish journalist and artist and the co-manager of WOW. Grondahl's book, published in 2013 as “The Revolution's Graffiti,” is a record of the contributions made by graffiti artists to Egypt's Revolution. However, some view WOW graffiti as a form of art that is too complicated to be considered as simply street art that communicates its message to people on the streets. Angie Balata, co-manager of WOW, said that the work WOW promotes in the field of abstract art is not always easy to understand “and for this reason we are looking to develop our messages into a simpler form of art.” Balata explained WOW's background to Al-Ahram Weekly and how it had developed from being project-based to an initiative that collaborates with recognised women's organisations worldwide. WOW was founded by Balata and Grondahl when the women noticed that among the 17,000 photographs of graffiti gathered for Grondahl's book, there were only about 250-300 featuring women-related issues. They decided to add more about women's issues to the revolutionary street art movement. In 2013, they launched the Bourse area project in Cairo that echoed their success and gained them exposure and greater presence. Then they moved to work on two garage projects with a focus on sexual harassment, female genital mutilation and other issues. 25-year-old Hala Ismail, who works in a bank in downtown Cairo and passes by the WOW graffiti in the Bourse district on a daily basis, said that the project had “developed graffiti art into something similar to what can be seen in the streets of European countries.” In 2014, WOW started cooperating with women's initiatives and leading feminist organisations like Nazra and HarassMap and talking with representatives from groups such as the Uprising of the Arab Women and the Women and Memory Forum. These allowed WOW artists to explore future projects. WOW is now growing fast and expanding its reach through Facebook, where it has some 4,000 fans. It plans to develop its current Web-blog into a larger Website in order to document more of its work and provide space for artists. The group is planning a street arts festival in Jordan with women artists from Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. Balata is proud of WOW's work and says that the group has been effectively promoting the graffiti art movement in the Arab world. She is excited about having so many women work with the group and hopes to find new success in Jordan and in collaborating with other countries.
