Ammar Abo Bakr

Ammar Abo Bakr is a muralist and graffiti artist in Egypt. His work depicts the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, portraits, Egyptian history, and Egyptian pop culture, and can be seen on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and in other places in Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne and Frankfurt.

Biography
Ammar Abo Bakr (aka Dibbanah) is a mural and installation artist from Egypt. His works have cased walls in Cairo, Luxor, Alexandria, Beirut, Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam and Brussels.

Ammar Abo Bakr was born on February 15, 1980. He attended Luxor Faculty of Fine Arts from 1996 and 2001 where he studied painting. Beginning in 2004, Abo Bakr began researching the Egyptian people, looking for inspiration for his artwork. In addition to creating his own graffiti pieces, he was a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Luxor University where he attended school.

His artistic practice is based on Egyptian culture and heritage and its relationship with people, architecture and the built environment. His work as a draftsman on a German-led scientific excavation of an archeological site in Asyut brought him into contact with Ancient Egyptian sites and artifacts, contributing to his desire to maintain and preserve Egypt’s artistic traditions and practices.

In 2007, Abo Bakr and his partner Assem Hamed set up The Mahrousa Association for the Preservation of Heritage and Contemporary Art, concerned with the revival of historic buildings and traditional creative practices including sculpture and hajj wall paintings.

Creative works


His artwork is influenced by Sufi, Coptic, Ancient Egyptian, and predynastic Egyptian aesthetics. His murals depict the history of Egypt, Islamic culture, and became a site of debate and discussion during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, with some on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, close to Tahrir Square, where the January 25 revolution occurred. His installations employ mix-media, sculpture and fabric and light installations, as well as painting.

During and shortly after the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, with Mohamed Mahmoud Street connecting Tahrir Square and the Ministry of the Interior, Abo Bakr's graffiti on this street reflected events that were happening during the revolution. When writing about his work, Abo Bakr noted, "What we did in Egypt in recent years was not about presenting art, at least it wasn't to me: We used walls as a newspaper... Me, I was a fine arts assistant professor. I left the faculty of arts to report on the revolution in the city’s walls."

In 2012, Abo Bakr, along with other artists started the "No Walls" campaign, aiming to cover government-erected concrete barricades with graffiti. The graffiti included murals and paintings of the continuation of the street behind the barricades. The goal of the campaign was to use trompe-l'œil to make it appear as if the barriers were not there.

Since 2016, Abo Bakr has also combined contemporary pop culture and the cultural environment of members of the mawlid community in Egypt into art, video and film projects for which he creates large scale interventions and site-specific installations, including an art exhibition in downtown Cairo "Where is the Fun in Contemporary Art" and another in a public bathhouse in old Egypt "Hamam El Talat".

Abo Bakr also created "Perfumed With Mint", a large-scale mural on a residential building in Amsterdam.

His work is also present in Egypt’s contemporary music scene, for which he has created artworks and production design for music videos, including the comeback video of hip hop artist Marwan Pablo "Ghaba" in 2021, and a Belgian-Egyptian collaborative piece featuring Egyptian Mahraganat musician Sadat el-Alamy in 2022, directed by Pauline Beugnies.

Abo Bakr believes that the art in Luxor and Cairo should remain out of galleries because that limits who sees it and because art is constantly changing.

Publications
(ill. Ammar Abo Bakr), Change of Perspective: A Reflection on Archaeological Work in Egypt: the Local Excavators of the Asyut Project. [Perspektivenwechsel: Eine Reflexion archäologischen Arbeitens in Ägypten. Die lokalen Grabungsarbeiter des Asyut Project]. Tina Beck, The Asyut Project 8, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016.

(featured artwork), Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution, 240p. (ISBN 978-3937946474), curated and edited by Basma Hamdy and Don Karl, 2014.

(ill. Ammar Abo Bakr), Generation Tahrir, Marseille, Le Bec en l'Air, 2016, 168p. (ISBN 978-2-36744-090-3), Ahmed Nagy and Pauline Beugines, 2016.

(cover ill. Ammar Abo Bakr), Creating Spaces of Hope: Young Artists and the New Imagination, Caroline Seymour-Jorn, American University in Cairo Press, 2021.