Friday March 29th, 2024
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This Egyptian Artist Is Creating Masterpieces Out of Metro Tickets

Tarek Ahmed Shahin, a 21-year-old student of architecture, transforms plain metro tickets into art on a magnetic strip.

Staff Writer

More than half of the people in Cairo use the metro as their main means of transportation. Who could blame them? It’s extremely accessible and saves hours on the road. Those yellow tickets with the magnetic strip in the middle are all very familiar to Egyptians, even those who don’t take the metro that often. But to some, like 21-year-old architecture student Tarek Ahmed, these little strips of paper are so much more than just a ticket.
Tarek’s first sketch on a metro ticket was of two people on either side of the train tracks, each going their separate ways. He realised that there’s so much more he could do with this simple idea.If you can use the metro to get from Helwan to Shoubra, then the tickets can transport you from Cairo to Rome, or Paris, or Dubai, or wherever you could think of, or at least that’s how Shahine felt. “Drawing on metro tickets makes me feel like it’s easy to travel and get to the places I draw,” he muses.

Be sure to check out the rest of Tarek's collection here.