Contemporary Egyptian art is undergoing a subjective turn, evidenced by a number of exhibitions shown in Cairo from 2015 through early 2017. This turn can be situated in relation to the last six years of aesthetic production in Egypt and its inseparability from the political shifts that have transpired in the country. With the failure of the 2011 revolution, the subsequent shrinking of political space, the ban on protests, and now, the clamping down on the aesthetic sphere itself, art’s uncertainty about its function has increasingly intensified. There has been a stark shift from the bold street art that covered the city, which became an iconic symbol of protest, to the diminished space for art today. Indeed, many of the early post-revolution discussions about contemporary Egyptian art pertained precisely to the question of whether and how art could uphold its revolutionary function. Drawing upon Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic notion of intimate revolt, this paper argues that in the absence of politics in the traditional sense, the exploration of subjectivity in contemporary art is political, one that configures psychic space into a novel relationship with social or public space. This turn inward is a double gesture. On the one hand, art reflects on its own status as art, and on the other hand, it prompts reflection upon the status of the Egyptian subject in the post-colonial, post-revolutionary context. This paper will discuss a number of contemporary exhibitions from the past two years to substantiate the claim that Egyptian artists are turning inward to explore the psyche, not only in the absence of politics, but also as a form of politics. Among the recent exhibitions to be considered are Ahmed Sabry’s Fifth District, Hany Rashad’s Bulldozer, the group exhibition A Season in Hell, Huda Lutfi’s Dawn Portraits, and Amr Nossier’s Painting and Drawing.