Hypatia.. A victim of ignorance, intolerance and using religion to control people, a symbol of being fought for having knowledge and proofing how powerful it is..
I had the chance to participate in "Women On Walls" graffiti festival this year as well, and I wanted to make a graffiti about her since a while, and I'm glad I did.. She inspired me, and I was so glad that while making this graffiti, I had the chance to being asked by many persons who passed by me and were wondering what I'm painting! Who's this woman! What's her story and why I'm making this graffiti! It's such a pleasure to have a chance while painting to interact with the common people who're not targeted specifically.. The graffiti is located in Mohamed Mahmoud street, off Tahrir square, Downtown Cairo.
If you don't know who she is, Hypatia was one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria and one of the first women to study and teach mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, the first woman to make a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics and astronomy.. Came to symbolize learning and science which the early Christians identified with paganism
Eventually, Hypatia's end was tragic what was mentioned that "With Cyril the head of the main religious body of the city and Orestes in charge of the civil government, a fight began over who controlled Alexandria. Orestes was a Christian, but he did not want to cede power to the church. The struggle for power reached its peak following a massacre of Christians by Jewish extremists, when Cyril led a crowd that expelled all Jews from the city and looted their homes and temples. Orestes protested to the Roman government in Constantinople. When Orestes refused Cyril’s attempts at reconciliation, Cyril’s monks tried unsuccessfully to assassinate him.
Hypatia, however, was an easier target. She was a pagan who publicly spoke about a non-Christian philosophy, Neoplatonism, and she was less likely to be protected by guards than the now-prepared Orestes. A rumor spread that she was preventing Orestes and Cyril from settling their differences. From there, Peter the Lector and his mob took action and Hypatia met her tragic end..
They dragged her from her chariot and, according to accounts from that time, stripped her, killed her, stripped her flesh from her bones, scattered her body parts through the streets, and burned some remaining parts of her body in the library of Caesareum."
Her story was mentioned in many novels, like "Azazil" by Yousef Zidan, and made as a movie like "Agora".. And she left her influence on me as well.. I thought not everyone knows her story and the horror she faced just because she's a woman and she's knowledgeable.. And coz her story keeps repeated in different scenarios, we still hear about many stories about people who were fought just because they're knowledgeable or want to help others which sometimes make a threatening to others with authority, so they use something like religion to wash people's minds, and people sometimes are uneducated and intolerant enough to be carried away by those calls and commit the worst crimes under the name of God or name of honor or name of patriotism..
I thought I should put some of the math, astronomy and philosphy symbols in the design, so I made some of these symbols as a tiara on her head, and made the philosophy sign on her mouth, shutting it, although philosophy is the outspoken sign..
I also wrote one of her quotes above her head:
" Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all "
Down there are the steps I've been through till the graffiti was accomplished..
This was the wall before the graffiti
The first step was to paint the wall with black paint
Then I used white markers to draw the figure
Then wrote the quote
Then some retouching with the black paint
And that's how she looked like by the end of day 1
Then I drew the symbols as a tiara and the philosophy sign by red markers
Then spraying the background, and adding the space atmosphere and drawing some stars around her
And then next day, I came to the wall and found out that someone dropped red paint all over my graffiti from head to toe!!!! Just as easy as that.. Of course I didn't see who did this, but some Graffiti artists here in Egypt were threatening us and somehow they thought they own the streets here, and I suspect they did that just to annoy us!! And to be honest I was reaaally annoyed coz I had to fix this for a while!!
So, I started painting black paint of the red, and even removing some parts with the paint and redrew them with markers all over again!!
That day the sun was unbelievably hot!
And I thought, I'd better leave some of the red paint, which I didn't intend to involve in the design but to deal with what the other artists did as an interaction!!!
And finally it was finished.. voila
