"A DELICATE BALANCE"
by Shepard Fairey
In 1886 France gave the people of the United States a sculpture of the Roman goddess Libertas. Sculpted in copper by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi "Liberty Enlightening the World" was created on a framework created by Gustave Eiffel, three years before his iconic tower was completed in Paris. In 2016 Shepard Fairey, aka Obey Giant, celebrated 25 years of speaking out on the environment with the release of a book and a show at Paris's @Galerie_Itinerrance both titled "Earth Crisis." Fairey also installed three murals while in Paris and this second of the three—on Rue Jeanne d'Arc—features the earth delicately balanced between Eiffel's two most well known projects. While created as an environmental message, I wonder if the people of France, when they now see the Statue of Liberty juxtaposed against the Eiffel Tour, still read this detail as sea-level rising or Lady Liberty sinking. @obeygiant/
