Princess Hijab is a graffiti artist who daubs hijabs and burkas on advertising posters in the Paris Metro, as today’s Guardian reports:

Princess (Hijab)winds through the corridors of Havre-Caumartin sizing up the advertising posters lining the walls. She has agreed to meet as she scours stations for targets for her next “niqab intervention”. In Spandex tights, shorts and a hoodie, with a long black wig totally obscuring her face, one thing is clear; the twentysomething doesn’t wear the niqab that has become her own signature. She won’t say if she’s a Muslim. In fact, it’s more than likely that Princess Hijab isn’t even a woman. There’s a low note in her laughter, a slight broadness to her shoulders. But the androgynous figure in black won’t confirm a gender. “The real identity behind Princess Hijab is of no importance,” says the husky voice behind the wig. “The imagined self has taken the foreground, and anyway it’s an artistic choice.”

“I started doing this when I was 17,” she says (I’ll stick to “she” as the character is female, even if the person behind it is perhaps not).

“I’d been working on veils, making Spandex outfits that enveloped bodies, more classic art than fashion. And I’d been drawing veiled women on skate-boards and other graphic pieces, when I felt I wanted to confront the outside world. I’d read Naomi Klein’s No Logo and it inspired me to risk intervening in public places, targeting advertising.”

The Princess’s first graffiti veil was in 2006, the “niqabisation” of the album poster of France’s most famous female rapper, Diam’s, who by strange coincidence has now converted to Islam herself. “It’s intriguing because she’s now wearing the veil,” the Princess muses. Intially she graffitied men, women and children and then would stand around to gauge the public’s response; now she does hit-and-runs. “I don’t care about people’s reactions. I can see this makes people feel awkward and ill at ease, I can understand that, you’re on your way home after a tough day and suddenly you’re confronted with this.”

 

 
Via the Guardian
 
More work by Princess Hijab after the jump…
 

 
Doel, Belgium, a town known mostly for it’s proximity to nuclear reactors, has become a virtual ghost town. Fortunately, radiation didn’t figure into Doel’s fate.  The townspeople of Doel were forced to move in order to accommodate the expansion of Antwerp harbor. Other than a handful of diehard citizens, a few businesses, and squatters, the town is uninhabited and will soon be demolished. In the meantime, Doel has become a huge canvas for artists. Cesare Santorini made this short film documenting the incredible and ephemeral street art of Doel.

I wish Santorini’s choice of music in this video had been better. You may want to turn down the volume.

 
(via Wooster Collective)