Women Take to the Streets, Make Art

Julia Baird in the New York Times:

One of the more astonishing outcomes of the Arab Spring has been a flowering of street art, a reclamation of dangerous, oppressive places. In Egypt, images of female martyrs of the revolution, protesting violent sexual assault, have crept onto crumbling walls. Mirah Shihadeh depicts women blasting harassers with spray paint. But most of the images are quickly painted over by the Interior Ministry.

It’s not just women in the Middle East who are using street art to challenge harassment. Last year, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh pasted posters around Brooklyn in a campaign designed to challenge men’s behavior in public spaces: “Stop telling women to smile!” and “My outfit is not an invitation.”