An optical illusion mural affixed to the facade of a medieval fortress in France is no less controversial for its temporary nature, even though the piece is not quite what it seems at first glance. Those aren’t swaths of paint defacing the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Carcassonne, Southern France – they’re ribbons of thin aluminum, which can be easily removed when the installation is taken down in September.

‘Concentric Eccentric’ by Felice Varini continues the artist’s tradition of creating large-scale perspectival pieces in urban environments, and it’s all the more stunning for the contrast it creates.

Fifteen yellow circles radiate out from the entrance to the fortress, drawing in the many tourists who flock to Carcassonne for its picturesque scenery and wine. The installation celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the monument’s UNESCO designation. While the design echoes much of Varini’s past work, it also complements the design of the fortress itself, which consists of two concentric outer walls, 53 towers and barbicans (fortified entrances) to prevent attacks during sieges, the first known use of the technique.

While some might find ’Concentric Eccentric’ a fun addition to the ancient city, some locals weren’t exactly thrilled, calling for the removal of the “filthy” artwork. Some even cried that the work was “ruining our lives.” Some said they welcomed the controversy because it proves that they’re “deeply attached to their heritage.”

To create the mural, local art students projected the circles onto the stone surfaces at night and applied the aluminum strips. France’s Centre Des Monuments Nationaux gives us a look at how this process was carried out in a series of behind-the-scenes photographs viewable on its website.

Photos by André Morin

One of Cairo’s seven settlements of the Zabbaleen, garbage collectors who make their living picking through and efficiently recycling the city’s trash, has gotten a little brighter with the addition of a massive multi-building mural that only comes into focus from a particular perspective. ‘Calligraffiti’ artist eL Seed organized a community-wide effort to paint sections of the mural onto the walls of 50 structures, blending arabic calligraphy with contemporary graffiti style. The work spells out a quote by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, who said “Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first.”

It’s not clear how many of the city’s inhabitants can actually access the spot on Mokattam Mountain where the various pieces of the mural actually come together into a cohesive whole, but it has certainly added some vibrancy to their neighborhood of Manshiyat Nasr. In photos of the mural, you can clearly see the trash bags piled high on the roof of virtually every building in the frame, and the streets look much the same.

‘Zabbaleen’ literally translates from Egyptian Arabic as ‘garbage people,’ and their community is known throughout the world as ‘Garbage City.’ Over 90 percent of their 20,000-30,000 population is Coptic Christian. They’ve supported themselves by processing Cairo’s trash for decades, using donkey carts and pickup trucks to transport it. Organic waste is fed to pigs and their recycling rate is an impressive 80 percent (compare that to the Western world’s average of 20 to 25 percent.) Their way of life is currently under threat due to Cairo authorities’ decision to transfer trash contracts to three multinational disposal companies.

“The Zaraeeb community welcomed my team and I as if we were family,” says eL Seed. “It was one of the most amazing human experiences I have ever had. They are generous, honest and strong people. They have been given the name of Zabbaleen (the garbage people,) but this is not how they call themselves. They don’t live in the garbage but from the garbage, and not their garbage, but the garbage of the whole city. They are the ones who clean the city of Cairo.”

On their harried way through the Toronto subway, commuters passing through the new Bayview/Sheppard station might glance at what looks like a scribbled mess of black paint on the floor and walls and wonder if it was the work of some vision-challenged vandal. But turn a corner and see those sketches from just the right angle, and suddenly playful shapes like umbrellas and clocks appear to be floating in mid-air.

Each of these 24 hand-drawn images are part of an installation by contemporary Canadian artist Panya Clark Espinal, optical illusions that require the viewer to stand in once precise location in order to see the object depicted.

“These images act as beacons, drawing the viewers along various paths of movement,” the artist writes on her website. “Depicting everyday objects and simple geometric shapes, the images are rendered in an uncommonly large scale and in unusual orientations, allowing one to interact playfully with them as one moves through the space.”

Known as ‘anamorphosis’, this type of art has been around since at least Leonardo da Vinci’s time, when he created a work called ‘Leonardo’s Eye’. Hans Holbein the Younger incorporated the technique into his painting The Ambassadors, which features an anamorph skull in the foreground that looks like some kind of unidentified hovering object until viewed from an acute angle.

Of course, the most famous contemporary version of anamorphic art is the sidewalk illusions of chalk artists like Julian Beever, who masterfully trick our eyes into seeing things that aren’t really there.