Fahmy is skinny, with a halo of black curls and a wry smile. He is a private man, especially for an artist. He mostly uses his alias online, and before the revolution he appears to have been cautious about maintaining distance between it and his real identity. Tracking him down took several days: queries of domain registrations, tracking an IP address to a server host, a call to Maderia, Portugal, and endless Google searches.

His style is playful and heavily influenced by comic books, even in his more formal work completed pre-Revolution. At a show in 2010 called "Why Not," attendees were made to walk through a door decorated as the mouth of a huge face, using a wooden ramp painted as a tongue. He told the reviewers at Almasryalyoum, "With a tongue, I can do good or I can do evil. I can tell so many stories with the tongue."

In an interview over email, he told me why he rejects being labeled as a mere graffiti artist, explaining that he reacts to things in many different ways. On February 11, Fahmy began his Martyr Mural series on walls around Cairo, painting large portraits of the men and women who had been killed in the colors of the Egyptian flag. The murals were an expression of grief and an answer to the popular desire to see the martyrs commemorated publicly -- as well as a big middle finger to Mubarak's vanquished Ministry of Culture.

Like any artist who attempts to provoke, Fahmy has gotten himself in trouble. He was arrested on May 26 for pasting stickers of what he called the "Mask of Freedom," depicting a mannequin with a gas mask and text that read, "Greetings from the Supreme Council to the free youth of the nation." He was released unchastened later that day, a sign of how much things had changed, or at least of the new military leadership's disinterest in a young graffiti artist.

Fahmy has at times angered even those who initially supported him, like the gallery owner who donated her wall for one of his martyr murals. When he painted instead the minister of defense and the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces walking arm and arm with Mubarak, surrounded by red hearts and a caption referring to the men as "regime lovers," the owner was outraged. Shortly after Fahmy completed it, the mural was vandalized and partially covered up.

"As soon as Mubarak was ousted, there was an explosion of overly nationalistic patriotic street art," Fahmy recalled, "I think that sort of street art has dwindled down, and we're starting to see more and more of a critical social and political commentary sort of street art. The battle now seems to fall entirely in the realms of media, propaganda, and public opinion." He disdains the military leaders who have taken control after Mubarak.

"The military's obviously trying to direct most media outlets into standing by its side, and spreading a general sense of insecurity amongst people, convincing them that in exchange for security, people have to trust the military and let go of most of the principles they revolted for," Fahmy wrote. "Those who see the ploy try to use whatever media they have access to, to communicate otherwise. This media is mainly the internet and the street."