Egypt’s Blue Bra Graffiti to be Exhibited in Montreal

The legendary blue bra stencil that was once omnipresent in the streets of Cairo will now be exhibited as a silkscreen print at Montreal’s Station 16 gallery. The artwork, created by Bahia Shehab as part of her series A Thousands Times No: The Visual History of Lam-Alif, was created in the aftermath of the brutal stripping and beating of a woman by the Egyptian military in December 2010, which revealed her blue bra. It was an incident that remained engraved in history as a symbol of military abuse.     

An icon of Egypt’s revolutionary graffiti, the stencil piece, titled No to Stripping the People was selected by the Canadian art gallery among 15 other pieces from street artists across the world who will be part of the A Global Street Art Story exhibit. The project, launched in December 2013, aims to create 16 silkscreen prints with 16 artists from around the world to promote the street art culture worldwide and facilitate exchanges among Montreal’s local street artists with their counterparts worldwide.