"In Cairo, art has come to be regarded as such a dangerous weapon that, last week, a prominent artist was falsely accused of being a terrorist. The artist, Ganzeer, is one of the few agitators to have rendered Sisi, publishing an inflammatory portrait online. After Ganzeer’s collaboration in a global graffiti campaign against Sisi attracted the attention of the television host Osama Kamal, Kamal wrongly called Ganzeer a member of the Muslim Brotherhood—which was outlawed by the Egyptian state in December. Ganzeer’s tag is known from Cairo to Vienna, but he had previously remained anonymous. Nevertheless, the broadcaster aired a photo of him on the evening news, using his real name as a scare tactic. It was startling because the thirty-two-year-old graphic artist has produced a vitriolic body of work against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. “Being anti-Sisi in itself is not a crime,” Ganzeer wrote on his blog. “So I guess Mr. Osama thought it necessary to attach a fictitious crime to my name.”
—New Yorker, "Picturing Egypt's Next President," Johnathan Guyer, May 22, 2014
