Marwan Shahin

Provenance: Courtesy of the Artist

“My portrait of Queen Elizabeth reading the holy Qur’an as my way of challenging Islamophobia in the UK”

Marwan Shahin a visual artist born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. 3 years ago I moved to work in Los Angeles, California. My work started getting attention way back when I created a mural of my infamous “The 2Vth (The Anonymous Pharaoh)” artwork In Alexandria, Egypt 2011 during the Egyptian uprising, my mural was a cultural phenomenon that was celebrated by the protesters, the people and the street art world, it was chosen to be the cover of critically acclaimed “Walls of Freedom” book which was banned in Egypt and all the copies coming from Germany got confiscated by the customs, because they said that the book was “instigating revolt” as it contained imagery confronting the police and armed forces at that time.

The 2Vth was a cultural phenomenon that was covered by The New York Times, The Huffington post just to name a few, Resulting in showing my art all over the globe, collaborating with great talents and genius producers that would help me conceptualize my vision to come to life, creating album covers for some of the biggest names in the music industry and getting the attention of my peers & idols like Shepard Fairey, Takashi Murakami & Cleon Peterson.

But the actual advantage of my art playing a part of the Egyptian revolution was giving me the privilege to witness how people can come together as one to make change and do the impossible, when people get over the minor differences and unite for their rights and the common good is the most powerful human experience. I definitely believe that If art can deliver a message to the people in a powerful, cool, relatable way it can encourage them to voice their opinion and demand their rights.

The work I’m doing now is best described as basically what ancient Egyptians were doing 7000 years ago, which is to tell and document their history through imagery and art. I’ve been researching ancient Egyptian murals and paintings and their design system so I can create my own interpretation of it. In my new body of work I’ve drawn from ancient references and I’m combining that with modern history, cultural misconceptions and social commentary. The reason why I approached this concept is because as an Egyptian artist I always felt that Egypt’s rich ancient culture in art, design and architecture hasn’t been properly referenced or built upon in contemporary Egypt or in the modern world. I want to change that. I want the work I’m doing to be looked at in a few hundred years from now the same way we’re looking at Ancient Egyptian artifacts today.