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Podcast: BULAQ | بولاق
Episode: Inji Efflatoun, An Egyptian Artist Who Traced Her Own Path
Description: As a teenager in Cairo in the early 1940s, Inji Efflatoun made two great discoveries: art and the Communist Party. Although she was from an elite French-speaking background, Efflatoun chose to “re-Egyptianize” herself, pursue painting and throw herself full-heartedly into anti-imperialist, feminist and leftist agitation. She was eventually arrested during President Nasser’s repression of Communists in the early 1960s. It was in prison that she embarked upon the most productive stage of her career as an artist. Today, her prison portraits and the vibrant, luminous paintings of Egyptian rural life she painted after her release are iconic. I...