decolonized art...

meet icaro doria, a brazillian artist who teamed up with Luis Silva Dias, João Roque, Andrea Vallenti and João Roque in producing the flag campaign that's been circulating the world via email. here is his statement on his campaign:

"We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags. We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO. The campaign has been running in Portugal since January 2005. There are eight flags that portray very current topics like the division of opinions about the war in Iraq in the United States, the violence against women in Africa, the social inequality in Brazil, the drug trafficking in Columbia, Aids and malaria in Angola, etc. With regards to the email presenting the campaign as being done by a Norwegian diplomat, this information is completely wrong. There is no Norwegian diplomat called Charung Gollar, there was no presentation in the UNO, and the campaign is not called ‘The Power of the Stars’. This was all invented and is going round the world via email.
That’s it, basically."

so who's the victim?

linked is the statement made by clothing designer Rick Klotz after his racy design for Freshjive involving Palestinean children with armed weapons with the word "victimized" written under it.

The entire point of this graphic, and other graphics, is definitely to push an opinion and a topic I would like our customers to pay some attention to (rather than blindly buy our product for fashion and aesthetic reasons). To inspire thinking and create a public dialog on such topics is extremely important, and discussions from both sides of the fence are extremely beneficial to come to realizations and hopefully mutual understandings. Respectful dialog between people who disagree is essential to the health of a democratic culture.
more after the jump