Shepard Fairey (Charleston, South Carolina, USA, 1970) Frank Shepard Fairey, OBEY, (born February 15, 1970, in Charleston, South Carolina, USA) is an American street artist and graphic designer, famous for the iconic “Hope” poster used by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. His designs draw on elements of mid-20th-century political propaganda posters. Including slogans like “Think and create, print and destroy,” which blend subversion with entertainment, his themes and aesthetics often combine caricature with a revival of political propaganda, Situationist ideas, and the aesthetic and philosophical revolutions of the 1960s—thematic undercurrents common in art from the late 1990s and early 2000s. His status as an artist is controversial, maintaining graphic design and advertising work with major brands on the one hand, and facing arrests in various countries for urban vandalism related to his interventions on the other. This makes him a prominent figure in the ongoing debate about the role of the artist and their ideology in the current context of capitalist societies. He champions public space as the primary arena for artistic and cultural life, offering a critique of the aesthetic and ubiquitous hegemony of advertising, spearheaded by large financial corporations.
