Gap's Defense of Sikh Model in Ad Campaign

From Yahoo: "Every holiday season, the Gap rolls out a new campaign that typically creates a lot of buzz, and this year is no different. However, controversy around one photo shows that the Gap is willing to stand up to racism. The theme of the holiday campaign is "make love" and the Gap posted this image in store windows and in outdoor ads.  ...

The two people in the photo are model and filmmaker Quentin Jones and actor and jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia, who happens to be a Sikh. New York photographer Robert Gerhardt noticed that one of the posters outside a New York City subway had been vandalized. The word "love" in "Make Love-"' was replaced with "Bombs," and "Please stop driving taxis" was also scribbled on the poster. Gerhardt snapped a photo of the defaced ad and forwarded it to Arsalan Iftikhar, senior editor at the "Islamic Monthly."

Read the rest of the article: GAP DEFENSE OF SIKH MODEL.

SARA CONTI : STICK 'EM UPS IN SAINT-GHISLAIN (B)

Sara Conti has had a busy summer, covering the unused, unseen walls of an abandoned Saint-Ghislain in Belgium with her irreverent characters vomiting, swimming, talking underwater, screaming, buzzing, bleeding and even sometimes (gasp) having what appears to be sex. Sara uses large "autocollants" – simple colored paper that is xeroxed; she then pastes with traditional wallpaper glue.

These newest works are expansive and bring together her simple matryoshka or babushka, Russian nesting dolls into dynamic and very weird plays of love and lust, solitude and electricity (life currents?).  We love them.  As for the sex, you'l have to figure out where and how.  Visit Sara's site: SARACADABRA.

Keith Haring Mural NYC, NY

Keith Haring on the Bowery, New York City, NY.

 Nice article by John Perreault about Haring (1958-1990), walls and the artists who are up against them.