The researcher Anahi Alviso-Marino talking about “The politics of painting in public spaces: Yemeni street art as a device for political action” in the first 20 mintues of this video. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia April 9-10, 2014.

إذا تم الحد من نطاق حملات سبيع دولياً، فقد كان قادرا على حشد الناس محليا على حد سواء، لتنشيط الذاكرة الجماعية وأيضا للحث على التغييرات التي أثرت على الناس خارج حملته كما في حالة المختفين قسراً. في الأرجنتين، ظهرت حملات شعبية مماثلة منها فن الشارع لرسم وجوه المخفيين قسراَ، حيث أن عدم وجود إجراءات قانونية أثارت آليات بديلة لإنعاش الذاكرة الجماعية والاستنكار. إذا كان دور مبادرات العدالة الشعبية، وكذلك الإجراءات الجماعية لاستعادة الذاكرة في الأرجنتين يلعب دورا رئيسيا في السياسة المؤسسية وغير المؤسسية اليوم، فقد تكون حملات فن الشارع لمراد سبيع هي الخطوة الأولى نحو طرق شعبية ومبتكرة لإثارة تغيرات في بلد يناقش حاليا مصيره.”

The researcher Anahi Alviso-Marino talking about “The politics of painting in public spaces: Yemeni street art as a device for political action” in the first 20 mintues of this video. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia April 9-10, 2014.

“As I pointed out at the beginning of this presentation, since the summer of 2013 Subay’ work has been qualified as Bansky-esque murals. The social and political comment that characterizes the British street artist’s work might be the only element in common with Subay’s practice. The fundamental difference with Banksy, but also with the type of street art that is being “artified” in Europe and in the Americas is the fact that Subay’s campaigns are collective projects, conceived to provoke the public not only to look at walls in the streets in a new way but also to participate in this redefinition of public space.

  If internationally the scope of Subay’s campaigns is reduced in this sense, locally he has been able to mobilize people both, to activate collective memory but also to induce changes that affected people outside his campaign like in the case of the disappeared citizens. Similar popular campaigns including street art, have been undertaken for instance in Argentina, where also the lack of juridical actions triggered alternative mechanisms of collective memory recovery and denunciation. If in Argentina the role of popular justice initiatives as well as collective actions for the sake of memory recovery are central to today’s institutional and non-institutional politics, Murad Subay’s street art campaigns might be the initial step towards popular and innovative ways of provoking changes in a country currently debating its fate.”