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Shepard Fairey We the People Are Greater Than Fear

The American street artist Shepard Fairey created a poster for Barack Obama's presidential election campaign. Information technology was 2008 and the simple red, beige and blueish stencilled image of Obama's face over the word "HOPE" rapidly became the iconic image of the election, the rallying cry effectually which it was fought and won. Information technology remains the enduring paradigm of his presidency.

Merely information technology is also now a reminder of promised hope ultimately unfulfilled, and many artists might have ended they would stay away from politics in future as a result. Instead, Fairey has been at the eye of a Kickstarter initiative to finance a protest poster campaign confronting Donald Trump'south presidential inauguration called "We the people: public art for the inauguration and beyond". It has been a cracking success, raising US$ane.4m in a calendar week. This volition see the posters printed as full page adverts in the Washington Mail; as placards to exist distributed for the inauguration; and as postcards to send to the new president.

The new images do not characteristic Trump or even refer to him directly, concentrating instead on the ethnic groups that campaigners fright face existence excluded from this new president'southward America. It's a radical shift in focus that nonetheless retains the colours from the Obama prototype and Fairey's signature stencil style. What does this tell u.s. virtually his journey equally a commentator – and nearly political art in 2017?

Lost illusions

Fairey'due south Obama poster was not most a man only rather a heroic, idealised, abstracted icon. It showed Obama thoughtfully looking upwards and to the right, into the distance towards the future hopes of the nation. Information technology symbolised the hope of things however to come, yet to be imagined – in keeping with other leaders elected on aspirations for change, such equally Tony Blair or John F Kennedy. In Fairey'south epitome, hope is promised merely nothing is specific. Information technology invites the viewer to project their own desires into the icon'south imagination.

For all its inspirational power, the affiche fix itself upward to neglect past making a personal promise it could non keep. How could one human fulfil the private hopes of millions of citizens? Once held up as an example of how a political poster could assistance bring virtually positive alter in the world, now it perhaps serves as a warning that information technology'south all just propaganda in the end.

Fairey certainly counts himself among those disappointed by Obama's 8 years in function. When asked in an interview in 2015 whether he thought Obama had lived upwards to the hope of his poster, Fairey answered frankly:

Not fifty-fifty close … Obama has had a really tough time, but there take been a lot of things that he's compromised on that I never would have expected.

Nosotros the people

Fairey'due south three new posters are only superficially like to the Obama image. Choosing not to feature the incoming president as either hero or villain, they show members of the public that represent marginalised groups inside society. Co-ordinate to the Kickstarter pitch, it is virtually creating "a series of images that capture the shared humanity of our diverse America". 2 other images have been contributed by fellow artists Ernesto Yerena and Jessica Sabogal.

While the fundamental themes of Fairey's art have always been propaganda and power, the "Promise" poster was very much nearly a conventional traditional propaganda approach that operated in the future tense. There is no unspecified hope in his new images; the figures do not brand promises about the future. They know what they want at present.

Over the text "Nosotros the People are greater than fear" a Muslim woman wearing a US flag hijab piercingly locks eyes with the viewer. By staring directly in this way, the poster becomes a personal confrontation. It is a direct challenge to consider what it means to be a member of the "Nosotros the People" of the American constitution and to uphold common values such as liberty from fear within this society.

Fairey'south image of the dreadlocked African-American boy inverts Obama's distant upwards dreaming pose by looking downwards to the left. He is non looking for a hero to save him. His eyes are not fixed on a vague dream of hope, but resolutely on the realities of living as a blackness American citizen today.

This work demonstrates that Fairey has learned and matured as a political communicator since 2008. By shifting the tense from hereafter-imaginary to present-reality, and the power from the heroic politician to the individual citizen, his 2017 posters become more than propaganda. They have the potential to go, as they said on Kickstarter, "symbols of hope", offer a positive strategy to "disrupt the rising tide of hate and fright in America".

As Fairey said recently, "We accept Trump, so what's the antidote? The antidote is non attacking Trump more." These are protest posters which attack hate by refusing to attack. In doing so, they offering new hope for the function and relevance of political art in Trump'due south America.