WHO KILLED BARACK OBAMA?

As we know from the recent controversy over the New Yorker cover satirizing stereotypes about Barack Obama, nothing can get you in trouble faster than cutting-edge comedy aimed at the Democratic presidential contender. In the U.S., that is. Over in Wrocław, a city of about 690,000 people in the southeast of Poland, things are a bit different. There, artist Peter Fuss has unleashed a giant-sized vinyl street mural, stretched across the side of a building, proclaiming "Who Killed Barack Obama?" In stark black and white, the enormous work features the image of Obama thrown on his back, apparently felled by an assassin’s bullet, with a drop of blood issuing from the corner of his mouth.


Playing on the oft-expressed fears that Obama might be assassinated like Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Who Killed Barack Obama? is part of a show organized by curator Joanna Stembalska and street artist Sławek ZBK Czajkowski at the Galeria Awangarda and other venues throughout Wrocław, July 18-Aug. 17, 2008. The show features Fuss and 19 other street artists, and is subsidized by Poland’s ministry of culture and national heritage.