Hope in a hopeless world

In 2015, the online arts and culture website Hyperallergic called Shepard Fairey’s famed Barack Obama “Hope” campaign poster “the most iconic artwork in the 21st century.” 

A decade later, it’s hard to think of another image that has appeared in the cultural landscape that is more instantly recognizable and emotionally charged than Fairey’s master work. 

“Hope” is the 21st century equivalent of Andy Warhol’s Cambpell’s Soup can. While Warhol was commenting on American consumer culture, Fairey’s work cuts a much deeper swath into the American psyche, confronting politics, social change and art’s ability to shape public perception.

“Hope” skyrocketed Fairey to international renown. The former skateboarder turned street artist shined the light on street art and the populist power of images stuck on public surfaces, sometimes with permission and often not. 

Fairey emerged on the art scene in 1989 with his “Andre the Giant has a Posse” sticker art that evolved into the Obey Campaign, which in turn became a global phenomenon.

Employing a similar color palette in all his work, Fairey is known for his stylized designs which are very similar to Russian propaganda art. 

Fairey subverts the idea of propaganda, which is designed to tell people what to think. Fairey’s work encourages people to think for themselves. 

Fairey painted his first mural in Aspen “Ideal Power” in 2018 at 520 E. Durant Street. He held a show of the same name at 212gallery at the same time. 

Fairey and his team began working on a second mural Tuesday called “One Earth” in a much more visible space, at the corner of Main Street and Galena, at the gas station. His work will be a crucial part of the visual landscape of Aspen for years to come.

The unveiling of the mural happens on Friday. Fairey’s show “One Earth” is produced and curated by Aspen native Katie Kiernan and 212gallery. Over 100 pieces of Fairey’s art are currently on display at Studio Como and The Snow Lodge. The show moves to the Intercept Design Fair on Monday where it will hang until Aug. 3. 

Activating an ambitious show like this with an artist as renowned as Shepard Fairey is no easy feat. In fact, it is three years in the making, according to Kiernan

“There has to be so much advanced planning just due to the demands of Shepard’s schedule,” Kiernan said. “To get on his schedule, you have to have two or three years advance notice. He and I planned this exhibition for the summer of 2025 back in 2022.”

Kiernan opened the 212gallery in Aspen in 2005, which held a physical space until 2018. She has been active in the art world in Aspen even without a dedicated spot, curating shows, working as a consultant, working with private art collectors and more.

The Aspen Daily News spoke to Fairey about Aspen, his work, the new mural and more in an interview conducted from his studio in Los Angeles. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Aspen Daily News: You are known as a populist artist, someone who speaks for the people. Aspen is considered to be a haven for the rich and the elite. Why do you share your work in Aspen?

Shepard Fairey: I like to show my work everywhere. Aspen is a pretty special place. It’s really beautiful and I think that there’s a strong creative community there and there’s a generosity in the spirit of a lot of the people. 

Sure, if you want to be a hater you could say, ‘Oh, well, there’s a lot of rich people in Aspen.’ But there’s also a lot of people with resources who are doing very philanthropic and forward thinking things with their money. 

My outlook has always been that accessibility to my work is really important. If I can find allies that have resources to push back against evil people with a lot of resources, or the corporations with a lot of resources that don’t care about how their actions hurt people in the world, then great.

 I want those people to appreciate my work and my point of view, and maybe put our heads together and maybe there’ll be some action on their part. If they’re just purchasing my art, I’m always using my resources to put into the things that matter to me which are things like equality, justice, environmental preservation, pushing back against disproportionate power and fossil fuel companies, things like that. 

When it comes to the environment, Aspen is a pretty great place because people appreciate the beauty there. So it’s top of mind for them. 

ADN: What is the meaning behind the title “One Earth?” 

Fairey: The title “One Earth” springs from the fact that we’ve got one planet and it’s important to maintain the health of the ecosystems. There’s a very precarious balance and that’s all we’ve got. I want to remind people that this is our one earth from an ecological standpoint but also this is our home. We all need to live here. We’re social creatures that coexist on this sphere and we benefit from working with each other rather than thinking selfishly. That is also part of the “One Earth” concept. 

Those principles are included in my work, in some really obvious ways and some more subtle ways. But the idea of the interconnectedness of things with humanity and with the environment is there in the majority of the work and that’s where the title comes from.

ADN: How do you keep the faith in a time where the current administration is eliminating so many environmental regulations?

Fairey: Well, just presenting a counter narrative on a regular basis is a form of resistance. Sometimes I’m outspoken about the Trump administration itself. But I don’t always think that’s the best strategy because it seems like we’ve devolved into this team sports-like tribalism, where if I attack your team then you will never take anything I say seriously again and you’ll consider me a mortal enemy. 

And so another approach that I use is to look at things that should be somewhat universal and unassailable, like the idea that, ‘Hey, flowers are beautiful. Air should be healthy to breathe. Water should be healthy to drink.’ These things can be emotionally projected with art that connects with people and bypasses some of their prejudices. That’s a big part of my strategy.

It might sound a little hippieish coming from somebody that’s been punk rock and very agitational, but I think each thing has its place and I weave in humor in some of my work to point out the absurdity of some of what’s going on. I look at everything psychologically. And then I try to implement it into my art.

ADN: The work in the show, is it relatively recent? Are we seeing how Shepard Fairey views this dystopian situation we’re living in now or is it older work?

Fairey: Most of the work that’s in the show is from last year. There’s a few things that are a little bit older. The work isn’t necessarily a response to the reelection of Trump. It’s more about promoting harmony and the health of the planet, embracing a way forward that’s more sustainable. And I don’t just mean wind, energy, or solar energy. I mean that in many of our behaviors right now.

ADN: There are several music pieces in the show and you are doing a DJ set Saturday at The Snow Lodge. What does music mean to you? 

Fairey: The accessibility of music and the communal nature of music is probably as big an influence on me as visual art. Music to me is something that’s both visceral and intellectual and I think that street art, when you’re doing it, is very visceral and I hope that for some people experiencing it is visceral because you see something daring, or you see something unexpected, and it’s a transformation of the landscape and that’s powerful. 

When I’m DJing, and I can feel the energy in the room, the way people are responding to the music, the way somebody might have their eyes rolled back dancing by themselves and somebody else is dancing with a partner, some people are singing along, this is kind of like the best of the human experience. And if it can then be bundled with lyrics like Bob Marley or Public Enemy, or The Clash, where it’s making people think about racial justice, power dynamics, maybe there’s some inertia from that that carries over into other parts of their lives. That’s awesome.

ADN: A big part of what you’re doing here in Aspen is public art with your mural. The biggest theme of your entire career has been public art. Is public art more important in a time like this?

Fairey: I always think that when fascism is encroaching, the strategy of fascism is to say, ‘You will be steamrolled by these monolithic forces so don’t even try to resist anything.’ 

Any symbol of resistance is very, very important and whether that’s a mural that has a counter narrative or whether it’s a protest with lots of people putting their bodies in the street, these things are important. You could say my art is my form of public address and that’s super important right now. 

A lot of my work in the street, historically, has been done without permission, and I’ve been arrested a lot. But it wasn’t all just because I loved being mischievous and a rule breaker. It was because I didn’t have any other way to democratize a space that I thought should be more democratic. 

I have been really fortunate that a lot of people liked my work and I got invited to do things that allow me to democratize my work and hopefully create a chain reaction that creates more opportunity for other artists so that there’s more creativity, more expression from citizens rather than just corporations in public spaces.

ADN: How much can you tell me about the mural that is going to be at Main Street and Galena Street?

Fairey: The new piece is environmentally themed, just like the one I did in 2018. It’s new imagery but some of the aesthetics are things that somebody would recognize, so they could connect the two murals and say, ‘I think that’s by the same artist.’

The central image is a bird perched on a flower, but sort of holding the flower like it’s a torch, depending on how you look at it. There’s some other symbols that I’ll let people see for themselves. There’s some things that put across the idea of cultivating justice.

ADN: How is the Obey Campaign aging after 35 years?

Fairey: Well, the Obey Campaign is something that always was meant to evolve. I was only 19, 20 years old when I was developing some of my theories about the control of public spaces. The campaign encourages people to question everything they’re confronted with, to analyze things more carefully and to look at how they can empower themselves to be participants in the world rather than as spectators. 

All those principles hold up all these years later and are ingredients within the Obey Campaign. A lot of the images I keep in rotation because I like the through line for people to understand my very humble beginnings — me working at a skate shop for $4.25 an hour, then learning how to screen print, starting my own screen print studio, going through many years of poverty, my work becoming almost like a punk rock chain letter where it was grassroots and people were curious and they were sharing it. 

I think that the internet has allowed things to be demystified rather quickly which is unfortunate sometimes but very convenient at other times. You can get to the bottom of something very quickly but it can kill the mystique. 

I’m still sort of a punk who questions authority, even though I work within the system a lot. But what I say is that I use the inside/outside strategy. When I can’t find a way to meaningfully work within the dominant system, or within those structures, I will work outside it. But if I can infiltrate and use the machinery to spread ideas that I think improve the system itself as well as people’s lives then I will absolutely do that. 

There’s some people whose brand is to rebel or be contrarian exclusively, which really limits their ability to use anything that’s seen as mainstream, or a sell out, or whatever. And I actually am embarrassed for those people because it’s such a narrowminded way to work. We’re one Earth. We’re all in this together. We all have to engage with capitalism. We all have to engage with Levi’s, Nike and Coke, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party. So you figure out how to work within those structures while having an independent mindset, it’s not one or the other. It’s both for me.

ADN: What is art’s contribution to humanity?

Fairey: Art is people searching for how to articulate their humanity itself. Art is seen as one of the ways we define civilization. Which means that you’re consciously thinking about how humanity works and what the meaning of life is. So art is us getting to develop something tangible around our philosophy of what it means to be human.