Show You Are Not Afraid

»Show you are not afraid«

Show you are not afraid is a series of interventions in the form of posters, documented by the artist Mikael Mikael through formally reduced photographs. The posters – black on white – quote the former mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, who asked people to show that they are not afraid one day after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. »Show you’re not afraid. Go to Restaurants. Go shopping!« By omitting the invitation to consume, Mikael Mikael reduces the sentence to its performative core. He puts the posters in places where terrorist attacks happened or where the consequences and/or causes of attacks are evident. In October 2011, the discursive dimension of the series was extended when the Israeli activist Or Teppler used the poster to express her solidarity with the Egypt blogger Elmahdy and received a broad international feedback from the media.

Mikael Mikael was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude and on show in 2013.

Follow up of the poster campaign here.