eL Seed’s Masterpiece — A Grafitti Piece Across 50 Buildings for the Coptic Trash Collectors of Cairo

As the calligraffiti artist eL Seed has traveled throughout the world over the last year leaving beautiful murals at each stop from Kuala Lumpur to Art Basel in Miami, one project has stayed in the back of his mind throughout this journey. This project Perception even for El Seed who has painted across the desert of Tunisia, painted an entire highway underpass in Doha, and one of the tallest minarets in North Africa is on another scale. Painted across 50 buildings in the Manshiyat Nasr neighborhood in Cairo, El Seed described the project in a recent Instagram post:

“In my new project ‘Perception’ I am questioning the level of judgment and misconception society can unconsciously have upon a community based on their differences.

In the neighborhood of Manshiyat Nasr in Cairo, the Coptic community of Zaraeeb collects the trash of the city for decades and developed the most efficient and highly profitable recycling system on a global level. Still, the place is perceived as dirty, marginalized and segregated.

To bring light on this community, with my team and the help of the local community, I created an anamorphic piece that covers almost 50 buildings only visible from a certain point of the Moqattam Mountain. The piece of art uses the words of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, a Coptic Bishop from the 3rd century, that said: ‘Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.’
‘إن أراد أحد أن يبصر نور الشمس، فإن عليه أن يمسح عينيه’

The Zaraeeb community welcomed my team and I as we were family. It was one of the most amazing human experience I have ever had. They are generous, honest and strong people. They have been given the name of Zabaleen (the garbage people), but this is not how they call themselves. They don’t live in the garbage but from the garbage; and not their garbage, but the garbage of the whole city. They are the one who clean the city of Cairo.” — eL Seed

An artist always challenging societies perceptions and misconceptions eL Seed is one of the most important and perhaps still under-appreciated artists in the world today.