The Radiance of the King

This week, I read the article The Radiance of the King by Donald Cosentino which was about Ghana artists creating art, or posters, of famous people, movies and ideas. This specific article was about our U.S. President, Barack Obama and his rise to fame, especially in Africa. These artists started creating posters by using the back of used flour sacks as their canvas. In the early 90's, these posters were known as 'the mobile cinema' which was their entertainment of interpretations of the artist's own imaginations based off a famous person or idea. Most of these artists came from a backgrounds of 'sign painting' or 'sign writing' so most posters included a tag line or quote as well to further emphasis the idea. As technology advanced and more of the population replaced cinema with television, the artists re-invented the posters as 'global image-scapes' portraying the world of politics. This article began to raise some interesting points to me but also lead me to questions about their canvas art.

A major thought or question was are these canvas posters intended to be humorous? As an American with Barack Obama as my President, I see him as a very influential, famous and most important person but the artist have taken him out of context to me and put him into a funny situation. But is that funny to them? As a read on, I learned that they are making these images as re-imagined and personal interpretations, not for the purpose of humor. Like this picture below, Obama is as a depicted as superman. Humorous to me, but to the Ghana artist, it shows Obama ready to save the White House, the U.S. or even the world. 

Obama Ready to Fly to the White and Black House

D.A. Jasper

Another major interpretation of President Obama is God-like. The artist, Stoger, is a very strong believer in religion and that Jesus is a very powerful figure. On this poster below, it quotes "Obama pray to God to Rule American And His prayer Has Been Answered." Among other posters, Obama is also compared to Martin Luther King Jr. and his 'I have a dream..' speech, George Washington as first President to Obama being first black President and Michael Jordan as being a famous black basketball player.

Obama is a Bless
Stoger

An interesting point that really caught my attention is the media revolution that recently occurred in Africa. "Even people who are really poor seem to have access to cell phones. It's down there with a loaf of bread as one of life's great necessities." This line of Cosentino's floored me as such an amazing, upfront and true reality. Cell phones have become such a major part of living that their even used as a print for their clothing! Cosentino ended these thought better than I can re-word. "That does flatten the world. Makes it so much smaller than anyone could have imagined even a few years ago."