by KELLY GROVIER
“We believe it is offensive because of the depiction of a near-naked woman, not on the basis of disrespect to Hillary Clinton,” a local official told ABC News. Lushsux covered the presidential nominee up with a painted burqa and wrote: “If this Muslim woman offends u, u r a bigot, racist, sexist Islamophobe” PHOTOS,Reuters/BBC
In art, as in politics, it’s always the cover-up that gets you into trouble. A sequence of photos chronicling the evolution of a piece of graffiti in Melbourne, Australia caused a stir on social media this week. The before-and-after photos reveal how the work’s creator, the street artist known as Lushsux, responded to criticism of his depiction of the Democratic nominee for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton. When local officials objected to Lushsux’s portrayal of Clinton wearing a skimpy star-spangled bathing suit stuffed with dollar bills, the artist revised his parody by hiding Clinton’s buxom figure behind an all-concealing black burqa with the aggressive caption “If this Muslim woman offends u, u r a bigot, racist, sexist Islamophobe”.
Lushsux is known for his acerbic visual sendups of celebrities: earlier this summer the artist said that American musician Taylor Swift had threatened to sue him if he didn’t remove an unflattering depiction of her beside the cruel commemoration “In Loving Memory of …”. Lushsux thrives on insolence and outrage. By covering up his parody of Hillary Clinton with an ambiguous religious statement, Lushsux sought to stymie his politically-correct detractors. In effect he dared them to object to the blotting out of a symbol of female empowerment (Hillary) by what many contend to be a symbol of female disempowerment (the burqa).
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