SAFEGUARD

Safeguard evolved from seeing a newspaper photograph of an infant dressed in a suicide bomber costume. I imagined what other commercial products might be produced in the “suicide bomber theme”. But mostly I thought about protection, protection for the children that don’t have the choice who parents them or what products are given to them.

The garish products I created using screen-printing and digital printing echo cheap fantasy merchandise produced to make children feel safe and to artificially give them a sense of power. In contrast, the subdued photogravure prints were originally digital images of children I pirated from right wing religious group websites. I commissioned Lothar Osterburg, a renowned master printer, to produce the prints in order to have the images take on an iconic implication.