Detail showing Asim Qureshi from Cage and Julian Assange from Wikileaks
Detail showing George Galloway as a Hyena and Anjem Choudary as a Vulture
Detail showing Mohamad Emwazi reaching for a knife, with Bashar Al Assad appearing in the mirror behind, and the Saudi Kings - one in the mirror one on a horse
Postcard from the Caliphate, still in progress having now had its first firing, is based on Mark Gertler's Merry-Go-Round, 1916. It depicts the Caliphate as a hideous seaside funfair. I read an article in the Independent which reported that a British jihadi had written a tourist guide to Islamic State. The top two thirds of the pot are the merry-go-round horses with IS fighters and their assorted backers and collaborators, enablers, and allies. The lower portion of the pot depicts a collection of Islamist apologists, including George Galloway, Anjem Choudary, Julian Asssange, Asim Qureshi, Yvonne Ridley among others. They dance on a beach surrounded by corpses and severed heads. The dancing figures are borrowed from Poussin's 'Bacchanal Before a Statue of Pan,' (National Gallery, London.) The horse-riding IS fighters are largely taken from Rubens' 'Fall of the Damned.' (Drawing in the British Museum, London.)
Thursday, 10 September 2015
Postcard from the Caliphate, 2015. Work in progress.
Labels:
Allegory,
Anjem Choudary,
Apologist,
Asim Qureshi,
CAGE,
Ceramics,
Claudia Clare Ceramics,
Iran,
Iraq,
ISIS,
Islamic State,
Julian Assange,
Mark Gertler,
Nicolas Poussin,
Peter Paul Rubens,
Satire,
Syria
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)