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Envisioning ‘Freedom’: Liberated Gender Identities in Young Egyptian Women Artists’ Oral and Visual Narratives


The 25 January revolution was a collective, popular movement that demanded improvement of life conditions on more than one level, such as social justice and better economic conditions, along with the call for freedom. Nevertheless, with the end of the demonstrations and the dispersal of the protestors, the spirit of the revolution and its demands continued to manifest on the level of the individual. The individualistic expressions of the demands were articulated by many individuals, each stressing one of the demands over the others. I argue that the freedom which inspired the 25 January revolution continues to inspire the aesthetic works of some contemporary Egyptian women painters. How is the ‘freedom’ which was one of the main mottos of the 25 January revolution reflected in these artists’ life stories and artworks? As independent artists, how do they negotiate their relationship with the different powers that control the art scene in Egypt? Their philosophy underlines their preoccupation with the liberation of identity, thus, the women they portray in their artworks enjoy a freedom similar to the one they aspire to. Their paintings reflect this preoccupation with women’s freedom – apparent in their clear commitment to women’s contemporary concerns, dilemmas and struggles against rigid societal norms and traditional gender roles/relations. The questions of subjectivity, memory, language and experience which are integral to oral history interpretation, and, according to Passerini, foreground ‘the peculiar specificity of oral material’ are looked at in relation to the artists’ artworks and oral histories.