Serendipity
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At my brother Patrick’s house in Brooklyn when Lindsay called me with the brief.
Posters in the background from 1997/98, I have had some time to think on the topic…
Shout out to The Visual Mafia and my mentor James Victore.
Posters in the background from 1997/98, I have had some time to think on the topic…
Shout out to The Visual Mafia and my mentor James Victore.
First round of concept sketches
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Outtakes
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During my making images for The Baffler, I created this image below Mickey's hands, making an OK gesture.
I loved and laughed aloud at the hand gesture's juxtaposition on an arm, removed from a body.
I intended to foster a relationship to (cultural) cannibalism in the image, not unlike literary fiction has done through the ages, to describe and critique various exploitative economies from Industrial England to the trans-Atlantic slave trade - to Walt Disney’s empire.
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Ultimately, I wanted to question, humorously, if everything in the Disney empire was still, in fact, OK?
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Next, Lindsay opened up my understanding that hate groups had co-opted this hand signalling. I quickly stopped laughing. It no longer meant things were going well. Instead, it has now become a display of white pride used by actors in racist, right-wing movements.
I loved and laughed aloud at the hand gesture's juxtaposition on an arm, removed from a body.
I intended to foster a relationship to (cultural) cannibalism in the image, not unlike literary fiction has done through the ages, to describe and critique various exploitative economies from Industrial England to the trans-Atlantic slave trade - to Walt Disney’s empire.
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Ultimately, I wanted to question, humorously, if everything in the Disney empire was still, in fact, OK?
—
Next, Lindsay opened up my understanding that hate groups had co-opted this hand signalling. I quickly stopped laughing. It no longer meant things were going well. Instead, it has now become a display of white pride used by actors in racist, right-wing movements.
With this newfound knowledge in hand, publishing this illustration didn’t make sense alongside The Magic Kingdom.
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But it does make sense to publish this illustration, here and now, a few months following an insurrection where white supremacists stormed The Capital building at the behest of the 45th president.
