Aung San Suu Kyi Street Art : GLOBAL GRAPHICA

ung San Suu Kyi Street Art : GLOBAL GRAPHICA

Large wheat-paste street art by artist Shepard Fairey (Obey / Swindle / Giant Has a Posse) on Broome Street, between Elizabeth and Bowery streets, in the Lower East Side / Chinatown / Nolita area of downtown New York City. The woman in the image is Burmese politician and democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was elected prime minister of Burma (Myanmar) in 1990. Shortly after the election, Kyi was prevented from taking office by the military junta that rules the country, and she has been formerly under government detention, mainly in the form of house arrest, for the past 14 years.

The art work appears to have been put up in two wheat-pasted strips that are slightly misaligned.(A sign, perhaps, of the work being put up in haste and the darkness of night so as to avoid detection by NYC police, we presume?) The work is a timely political statement in the wake of Kyi's recent trial in Rangoon.

http://www.globalgraphica.com/street-art/2009/08/18/aung_san_suu_kyi.html