From the Obama ‘Hope’ poster to the ‘Obey Giant’ campaign, few others have shaped visual culture over recent decades like Shepard Fairey. Arguably one of the most influential street artists, illustrators and graphic designers of our time, Fairey’s pieces are featured in contemporary art museums across the US, as well as in London. His works not only actively shape the urban spaces they exist in, they elicit conversations about power structures and control.
Since his first visit to Berlin over 20 years ago, he has been drawn to the city’s streets as a space for experimentation. His work blends activism with art, turning walls into platforms for conversation, challenging authority and connecting communities. Fairey’s wide breadth of mediums, not limited to street art and extending to stickers, posters, printmaking and beyond, has set him apart and allowed him to engage in socio-cultural discourses from multiple vantage points. His exhibition Photo Synthesis, currently showing at Fotografiska, explores his evolution as an artist, tracing the trajectory of his career through multiple mediums and points of social engagement. We spoke to Fairey about how sociopolitical dynamics intersect with street art, activism and his work in Berlin.
What is it about this city that makes it such fertile ground for artists like yourself?
I haven’t spent enough time here to know all the socio-political aspects that might play into that. I have a theory about the formerly East Berlin areas being a little bit more economically depressed and that then meaning there was space for graffiti artists to work.
When I first came here in 2003, Kreuzberg was the most graffitied place I’d ever been – it really seemed like a playground for rebel youth, and that was great. I first came here to be part of a street art show put on by a group called Backjumps, which included Banksy, Faile, WK Interact, O’CLOCK – a very prolific French graffiti artist – and a few other people. It was quite a special moment. Then even going back further than that, there’s a magazine that I have been friends with for a long time called Lowdown and they were always looking at the intersection of streetwear, skateboarding, street art, graffiti and music. These are the cultures that spawned me, and even though a lot of those cultures have US origins, finding a hub that aggregated all of them didn’t really become common until at least the late 90s and early 2000s, so it seems like Berlin, with a magazine like Lowdown, was already fuelling that convergence.
You mentioned you first came here in 2003. Since then, you’ve been back to paint a number of different murals. Did you come to Berlin with the ideas already in mind, or did the city itself become the canvas that brought them to life?
Well, it’s a combination of both. I try to look at my work based on (sometimes) US politics but often the idea of being a global citizen, because a lot of places are dealing with the same issues: whether it’s the scapegoating of minorities or immigrants, economic inequality, racial or gender biases or the need to acknowledge climate change and look for ways to protect the planet for future generations. Those things are global, and they might take on a certain mutation here and a different one in the UK, in Greece and in the US.
I’ve had the police arrest me in a city while at the same time, I was being celebrated by the mayor with an unveiling of a huge art piece on the side of City Hall.
When I’m looking at work that I’ve made, a lot of times, a piece that I’ve made for the US, knowing even a little bit about German politics, I know that it makes sense here. For example, one of the images I did in Kreuzberg of a Muslim woman, sort of looking a little bit cautiously through the curtains out into the world. I know that there’s been a rise in incidents of Islamophobia and a lot of far-right parties promoting nationalism. And of course, Kreuzberg is a mixed-race neighbourhood with a lot of Turkish residents. So to me, it made sense to do that. For me it’s about finding the ability to share my values in Berlin that are also global values, which reflects how I feel about things in the US also. But there was another piece that I did in Berlin, No Future for Apathy! Ignorance! Sexism! Xenophobia! Racism!, that’s a US thing that really came to the forefront during Trump’s first term campaign and his first term – it’s even worse now. One of my other Berlin-based images is a Make Art, Not War piece, and that’s pretty universal. If I spent enough time here, maybe I would have fuel for something that was maybe more specific to German politics or German social concerns, but I think that the things I’ve done, they work here.
In past interviews, you’ve described your “inside/outside strategy” when it comes to working with corporations. You described it as being like a “Robin Hood effect”, taking from the rich in order to spread your activism. Do you still see yourself and your practice in this way?
Absolutely. I don’t do as many corporate projects as I used to – I used to only be able to survive by taking on some corporate work. Now, I choose the partnerships very carefully. For example, I recently did some art that is available on screens on Samsung televisions. Years ago, my wife and I bought a Samsung television that came preloaded with art by two artists that we love, Barry McGee and Claire Rojas – Claire Rojas actually used to work for me, cutting stickers – and I thought ‘Oh, when the TV is off, it’s just like you have a Claire Rojas art piece in the room. This is really phenomenal.’ It’s a great way to have art be accessible, affordable and to reach an audience that doesn’t go to a gallery or a museum. A corporate collaboration like that makes a lot of sense for my philosophy. It’s not even just about the royalties that I would get from it. I mean, everybody’s gotta live – that doesn’t hurt – but it’s even more about just the idea that it’s another platform to interface with an audience.
My work has always been about trying to reach people wherever I can possibly reach them. Street art was initially one of the only ways that I could put my work in front of people without forcing them to go to a destination. In fact, no galleries or museums were asking me to show anyway, so it was really my only outlet. In the beginning, 35 years ago, I made t-shirts of my own art to sell or give to friends. Whether it’s clothing, a t-shirt as a canvas or working with activist organisations that might use some of my art for a programme they’re doing about an issue, fine art murals, inexpensive prints, stickers, doing things in galleries and museums or the Samsung television screen project: these are all important to me in terms of ways to reach different audiences where they’re living their lives.
How does your creative process or mindset change when you’re creating art for a gallery versus art for the street?
I think that there’s a lot of overlap between what I do for the street and what I would do for a gallery show, but there are also a lot of differences. The main differences are when I do something for the street, it might not last very long, so I need to think about the efficiency and the sacrifice I’m making – especially when I used to do everything illegally, I had to make it inexpensive, because I’m just sacrificing it to the street. It also needs to be very clear and effective in catching someone’s attention, despite all the visual noise. When I’m showing in a gallery, I could use some of that same imagery, but also push it further, with layering, texture, subtleties that a captive audience in a gallery situation will take the time to look at; all of those subtleties make it feel a little bit more rich and give it depth. It just depends really on if I have time to make something a real fine art piece. I love that, but I also don’t want to prioritise that over connecting with an audience who are just walking the city. They both have their different concerns, but they’re both creative challenges to take on and I enjoy the challenges of each zone.
The British artist D*Face once said your work, “blurs the line between vandalism and urban renewal”. You’ve been celebrated by major institutions and at the same time arrested for illegal street artwork. What do you think this contradiction reveals about the society that we live in and how it values art?
First of all, society’s not a monolith – there’s a lot of inherent contradictions in the diverse makeup of a society. I’ve had the police arrest me in a city while at the same time, I was being celebrated by the mayor with an unveiling of a huge art piece on the side of City Hall. This literally happened to me in Boston in 2009; picture with the mayor one day, arrested the next day.
What I always look at is the nature of power. I look at how, when it’s in the best interest of those in power to embrace or support the arts, they will do that because it makes them look less driven by narcissism. It makes them look a little bit more generous. But when the ‘arts’, such as illegal street art or graffiti, threaten who’s in control, there’s always that perceived idea of things moving towards anarchy. And then also, they always favour the rich and powerful. So if some property owner says, ‘I don’t want this here’, then they will want to punish it, no matter how much the rest of the society thinks it enriches things culturally. This is the battle that is always going on. I’ve lived it and observed it long enough to understand that you have to be very shrewd about how you navigate all of that. I’m often suspicious of the powerful, but at the same time if I can infiltrate not just the corporate structures but government structures, to try to improve the culture from within and project my messages out into the world, I think I would be foolish not to do that. Ultimately, the government is supposed to be an instrument of the people, I’m one of the people.
Some well-known street artists, like Blu, have destroyed their work in Berlin in protest against gentrification. Do you share the sense that cities are commodifying street culture, from skateboarding to fashion to the art itself?
Gentrification is always frustrating. However, I don’t blame it on a city; a city is a very complex organism. Greedy people are always looking for an opportunity to exploit and sometimes those are developers, those are landlords. If the government doesn’t regulate developers and landlords to make sure they aren’t allowed to create suffering for people that aren’t able to economically adapt to a rapidly changing situation, then I think they’re failing the people. But there will always be someone that says, ‘Oh, I’ve lived in this property for a long time. I’m going to sell, and it’s going to become what it’s going to become, screw it. I don’t really care about the integrity of the neighbourhood’, because a lot of times people are either greedy or they’re desperate.
Artists being blamed for gentrification is a bit ridiculous, because all they do is enthusiastically try to share their work. I don’t think that creative culture itself is what should be punished. I think that the exploitative practices of the landlords and the developers is what should be pushed back against. And in order to do that, voters actually have to vote in a smart way. If you don’t like gentrification, educate yourself and vote in a better way.
I love Blu’s work, but I think that Blu’s approach is actually not helping anyone – including Blu. I don’t think there’s very many people that are like, ‘Oh, wow, yeah, Blu erased his work from this neighbourhood so I don’t support moving here’, and everyone else is like, ‘Who gives a fuck?’ They’re just gonna do it anyway. I wish that Blu had that kind of power to change people’s attitude, but I really think that if he were to make more art discussing that issue and that art was something that people were intrigued by, it could create conversations that would actually be a lot more meaningful than just erasing old work.
In 2017, your LA show Damaged was described as “a reflection of a fractured world”. You said then “I couldn’t think of a better word to describe the state of things”. If you were to choose one word to describe the state of things now, nearly a decade later, what would it be and why?
It’s still fractured, but the word I use now is polarised. Social media’s business model is designed to maximise engagement, the algorithms figure out what we’re attracted to – and when I say attracted to, we’re attracted to things that make us angry – and it keeps pushing that content. Social media is making polarisation much worse and a lot of politicians are exploiting that. This is why I’ve transitioned in a lot of my work from formerly making pieces that were largely about critiquing what I think is wrong – and there’s still a component of that – but I think that a lot of times that just reinforces the existing polarisation. It gets a high five from the people that already agree with me and then everyone else is like, ‘Shut up, Libtard’.
Now what I’m trying to do is find some universal principles that, for a rational, kind person, are totally unassailable. Like, treat other people like you want to be treated, keep the planet livable. No one is less human, less whatever your nationality is. How I try to reach people is by making things that draw them in – using sometimes beauty, sometimes something powerful graphically – to draw them into considering something that maybe isn’t exactly what they already think, but that they’ll lean into instead of automatically rejecting because it uses a symbol or word they’ve been conditioned to reject. This is what I call ‘the Trojan horse approach’ – here’s a gift, and then my ideas get past the wall.
Photo Synthesis, through Mar 8, 2026, Fotografiska, Mitte
