Egyptian Graffiti Artist Nemo to Display Work in Iran

One of Egypt's most renowned graffiti artists and one of the changemakers featured in our 16 of 2016 list, Ahmed Gaber aka Nemo has just achieved something pretty cool; he has managed to get his work noticed by the Student Sociological Association at the University of Tehran where they are displaying several of his pieces in an exhibition titled Popular Art in MENA: A Public Exhibition (Mural and Music) that started on February 14th and will run until February 21st.

Nemo tells us that he was pretty surprised to receive the email informing him that his work had been chosen to be displayed in the exhibition that focuses heavily on Egyptian street art, especially in a place like Iran. 

Tehran must really have its shit together when it comes to locating art, seeing as Nemo predominantly - and purposely - makes his murals in countryside areas near Damietta and El Mansurah - far from the millions of eyes in Cairo. Nemo did however, attract a great deal of international and local attention when he organised the Gedary Initiative last year, where he brought together a collection of 15 graffiti artists to beautify the town of Kofour El Ghab, which sits between Damietta and Mansoura, adorning every street and alleyway with colourful murals that brought the town to life. 

“I prefer to paint in places whose inhabitants haven’t been exposed to much graffiti. I never spray in Cairo because everyone who makes graffiti does it in Cairo - there are other places that can benefit from it and those places might not be attractive to other graffiti artists, but I like them,” he explains.

“My work has started taking a different direction lately, I did a couple of pieces around Al Mansurah that have been getting some attention, specifically because of where they are located - in more open spaces than I am used to. Stylistically speaking, my work was quite basic when I first started in 2009 - I would use one stencil and one or two colours. Fast forward to now, I’m using techniques that are a lot more complex and a lot more colours, so my work looks very different now,” Nemo explains.

Main image by @MO4Network's #MO4Productions.