The artifact that I chose for my civic artifact speech is an artwork by Shepard Fairey, the famous artist that created the Hope poster featuring Barack Obama during the 2008 Election. Shepard Fairey is apart of a campaign called We The People, which is a campaign that was used to protest President Donald Trump. The campaign launched right before Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017 following a shocking and brutal election. The posters that Fairey created were a sign of protest of Trump. Fairey created a total of three posters, including the one show above. These posters depict three women, a Muslim, a black woman, and a latina. The most popular one is of the Muslim woman and for good reason. Ridwan Adhami captured this image at the World Trade Center in 2006 on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and was eventually used as an inspiration for Fairey. At the basis of it, it can be inferred that the target audience is all US citizens. I say all US citizens because this poster can mean a lot of different things to different types of people. Seeing a Muslim woman wearing an American flag hijab over the words “We the People are greater than fear”, amidst Trump’s Travel Ban (Muslim Ban), had one overall message: Patriotism has no race, religion, or sex. Having the line “We the People” acts a way to draw people in, this could be used as a way to remind people that although our country might be divided, we all have common American values and we need to stick together in order to secure said values and freedoms. The poster was widely used at the Women’s March in Washington DC, following Trump’s Inauguration and was even shared online. I chose this for my Civic Artifact Speech because this poster has a very clear and great message and a great reflection as to what our country is and should be.
Great artifact and good start to your analysis. There is a lot of room to talk about how Fairey composes it relying on people’s recognition of his past work and also provokes us to think about our assumptions in relation to being an American. The phrase ‘we the people’ is also very evocative and lends itself to analysis.
I absolutely love the presentation of your entire site, and especially your incorporation of a picture of the poster in this blog! I think your work is extremely informative, and keeps the audience’s prior knowledge in mind by addressing specific attributes of the history of the poster and its importance. Awesome job! The writing is also done well, and seems to answer every question asked. The only advice I can offer is to keep it up!! (and maybe help me with improving my formatting of my site (: )
hi -w-