I'M INSIDE

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SET MARGINS PUBLICATIONS, THE NETHERLANDS

 

PHOTOGRAPHY, 2025

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During the Trump Biden election campaign, I created a series of collages in which I superimposed real current graffitied street slogans (found in countries with free speech) onto communist propaganda postcards from the Cold War era (1947 to 1991). These slogans are about free speech, women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, authoritarian regimes, philosophy, MEMES phenomenon, religion, conspiracy theory phenomenon, climate change denial, patriarchy and the usage of absurd humor to go through these various current crises.

This body of work aims to decontextualize both the slogans and the propaganda messages through contradiction and anachronism, considering that spray paint started to be used internationally for graffiti in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and that the climate of censorship and repression made it nearly impossible for unsanctioned slogans or graffiti to appear publicly. I found the tags and postcards through extensive research. I collaged them based on their respective meaning and visual relevance. I chose to select only absurd humorous slogans to contrast with the seriousness of these postcards. Each image has a title that reveals an extra layer of interpretation.

This collage work draws on and is referential of the DADA art movement, as well as the work of artists Marcel Duchamp, Jenny Holzer, Guerilla Girls, Barbara Kruger, Lawrence Weiner, the Monty Python, and The New Yorker cartoons.

Gabriel Jones