Protest Posters: Art with a Message

This poster created by the Art Department 

of Adbusters Magazine was published as a pull-out poster 

in the September/October issue. It was on newsstands in July.

It set the date for the occupation of Wall Street.

The question, "What is our one demand?" rests above a graceful ballerina alight the raging bull of Wall Street. Behind them cops in riot gear approach through the haze, a foreshadowing of tear gas?  It's an effective poster. Not all political posters work so well. Check out the Occupy Wall Street: Poster smackdown on Salon.com, a slide show and review of some of the posters newly fostered by the burgeoning Occupy Wall Street movement. 

Just a few posters from the Occupy Wall Street: Poster smackdown on Salon.com

The two posters below rely on giving familiar imagery a new twist. As Londoners occupy St. Paul's, the familiar, recently re-popularized, "Keep Calm and Carry On" poster that admonished the Brits to keep a stiff upper lip during the dark days of World War II has been adapted to the current crisis with "Keep Calm and Occupy London". The Occupy Wall Street poster by Lalo Alcaraz topples a statue of the tycoon from the popular American game of Monopoly in a scene strikingly reminiscent of the toppling of that statue of Saddam Hussein when U.S. troops entered Baghdad.

Protests for Ai Weiwei

 "What can they do to me? 

Nothing more than to banish, kidnap, to imprison me. 

Perhaps they could fabricate my disappearance into thin air, 

but they don't have any creativity or imagination. 

And they lack both joy and the ability to fly."

Ai Weiwei's last blog entry before his April 3 detention.

 Photo: Elisa Haberer

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has still not been seen by his friends and family. Officials claim that he is under investigation for "economic crimes" but the police have still not informed his family regarding his detention from the Beijing airport two weeks ago. Colleagues of Ai also remain missing.

 Artists and activists protest the detention of Ai Weiwei in Hong Kong.

Photograph: Tyrone Siu/Reuters The Guardian

According to the British newspaper The Guardian a Canadian curator organized artists around the world to protest Ai Weiwei's detention by taking chairs into the streets and sitting in silent protest. This idea stemmed from the 2007 installation, Fairytale, of Ai Weiwei's where he took 1,001 Qing Dynasty wooden chairs and 1,001 Chinese citizens to Germany. The German curator of that show, Roger Brugel, sat in protest outside of the Chinese Embassy in Berlin. Said Brugel, "It's crucial to exert pressure now, before they come up with a verdict."

Fairytale, Installation, Ai Weiwei 2007

photo: Galerie Urs Meile

 

Censored in China, Ai Weiwei's Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, has just been made available through MIT Press.