This poster was printed as part of The World’s UnFair by New Red Order (NRO), a biting, satirical take on historic World’s Fairs and what the creators argue were their racist, colonial practices. The free public art installation was on view in Queens, New York, from September through October 2023. The poster features two cartoonishly distorted figures that fuse Dutch clogs with cigar-store Indians—merging symbols of colonial settlement with the racist caricatures long used to market “Indian” products. Their anthropomorphic mouths are agape; one smokes a cigar and salutes the viewer in mocking reference to such advertising tropes. Spray-painted over them in red—a color long associated with Indigenous resistance—is a version of NRO’s logo, a hybrid design combining the symbol of a corporate bank with Indigenous elements. This approach aligns with Australian anthropologist Michael Taussig’s theory of additive defacement: it does not erase the offensive imagery but marks it as condemned—acknowledged yet decisively rejected.
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