Bin Laden Artwork Now Hanging In New York

[ECH1969]

The writer had big problems with a painting by Harlem artist "Tafa". It depicts an upside down Christ-like figure with a face strongly resembling Osama Bin Laden. The email read in part, "This is outrageous. This is an attack against my religion. How can an artist go so low? Most people are outraged, most Christians."

On the phone with me, the artist declined to do an on-camera interview, telling me the work speaks for itself, but adding, the resemblance to Bin Laden was no accident.

The art show's producer Josh Wainwright, insisted he hadn't even made the Bin Laden connection. "Knowing what you know now would you have barred the painting from being part of your show?" I asked. "Absolutely not," he replied. Wainwright says he's a military veteran and despises Bin Laden, but he added, "I don't think it's anyone's job or vocation to limit the expression of artists."

http://wcbstv.com/local/local_story_033162841.html

[smirkymonkey]

1. Who is going to issue the first death threats?

The Christian Taliban or the Muslim Taliban?

[WhiteTara]

2. Josh Wainwright

another true American Hero :patriot:

[pschoeb]

3. I guess I don't understand why people are upset

If it is Osama, depicting him like Christ but upside down, is like in Tarot or other things, saying he is the opposite of Christ, or the anti-Christ.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

5. Lack of funding for Arts education

This story is the perfct complement to the one about the parents who are upset that the school music teacher let them see a movie version of the opera Faust. :eyes:

[bif]

4. Can you say "fatwah"?

[hughee99]

6. I wonder how this would have gone over in Denmark? n/t