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This Egyptian Artist Turns Arab Stars into Renaissance Paintings

Mahmoud Soror is a Cairo-based graphic designer you need to follow on Instagram. A quick scroll through the Photoshop-savvy artist’s page, where he’s accumulated over 16,800 followers, will reveal a sea of hilarious and original art works that heavily rely on pop culture, and that’ll have you double-tapping endlessly.

Nestled between Photoshopped images of himself embracing Egyptian football star Mohamed Salah or perched next to Drake at a basketball game, is a series of artful images depicting Arab celebrities as Renaissance paintings that immediately caught our eye. In one portrait, Nelly Karim poses as the Mona Lisa, while another sees Salma Abu Deif take the form of an 18th century woman, complete with a rose-strewn bonnet and sack dress. Other Egyptian stars to feature in the artsy series, entitled Museum, include actors Asser Yassin, Amir Karara, Ahmed El Sakka, and Mohamed Ramadan, who are all depicted wearing Victorian-era dress coats and uniforms. The realistic-looking portraits have unsurprisingly caught the attention of some of his subjects, including Yassin, who took to his personal Instagram account to repost the image.

Soror’s work brings to mind Google’s new app, Google Arts & Culture, which upon its release quickly topped the iTunes chart thanks to it’s “Selfie” feature that everyone, including celebrities, became hooked on. However, unlike the feature, which matches you with a lookalike artwork (that might not look like you at all), the Egyptian graphic designer’s lifelike portrayals won’t leave one mildly offended.

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