Claudia Clare
Postcard from the Caliphate, 2017
85 cm high x 50 cm wide
Further images
The artist comments: This was inspired by a report about a British jidhadi who went to Islamic State and wrote a travel guide for potential tourists. The central image, the...
The artist comments:
This was inspired by a report about a British jidhadi who went to Islamic State and wrote a travel guide for potential tourists. The central image, the merry go round, is in honour of Mark Gertler’s painting ‘Merry Go Round,’ 1916, which is a response to World War I. It is also a visual rendition of what the postcard home might say.
The characters that appear in this work are, (central layer): Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the ‘Caliph’ of the Islamic State; Bashar Al Assad, Mohammad Emwazi, (also known as Jidhadi John,) the Saudi King Salman, Recep Tayip Erdogan, Khaled Meshal, (Hamas), Hasan Nasrullah, (Hezbollah), Ayatollah Khamanei, a couple more drunken British jihadis, and Vladimir Putin. Parading around the murky depths are their admirers, apologists and collaborators: George Galloway as hyena, Anjem Choudary as vulture, Yvonne Ridley, Moazzem Beg, Asim Qureshi and Julian Assange – as a vicar rear-ending a goat, along with an assortment of fawning, selfie-taking dancers. The Caliphate’s flag is copied from a version of one made for London Gay Pride, 2016, where the lettering was made up of butt plugs. The designer remains anonymous. Whoever you are, I salute you.
This was inspired by a report about a British jidhadi who went to Islamic State and wrote a travel guide for potential tourists. The central image, the merry go round, is in honour of Mark Gertler’s painting ‘Merry Go Round,’ 1916, which is a response to World War I. It is also a visual rendition of what the postcard home might say.
The characters that appear in this work are, (central layer): Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the ‘Caliph’ of the Islamic State; Bashar Al Assad, Mohammad Emwazi, (also known as Jidhadi John,) the Saudi King Salman, Recep Tayip Erdogan, Khaled Meshal, (Hamas), Hasan Nasrullah, (Hezbollah), Ayatollah Khamanei, a couple more drunken British jihadis, and Vladimir Putin. Parading around the murky depths are their admirers, apologists and collaborators: George Galloway as hyena, Anjem Choudary as vulture, Yvonne Ridley, Moazzem Beg, Asim Qureshi and Julian Assange – as a vicar rear-ending a goat, along with an assortment of fawning, selfie-taking dancers. The Caliphate’s flag is copied from a version of one made for London Gay Pride, 2016, where the lettering was made up of butt plugs. The designer remains anonymous. Whoever you are, I salute you.
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