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CAPE TO CAIRO
CAPE TO CAIRO
This is the first poster I designed for The Name Game, a series of posters that forms one component of the Equations for a Body at Rest project. These posters were on display at different billboard sites across Birmingham during the Commonwealth Games in 2022.
This poster points directly at the hubris that informed Britain’s imperial project. It takes its inspiration from two visually similar images. The first is the promotional poster for the Games in Sydney, Australia in 1938, which shows a hurdler striding across the Sydney harbour. The second is the famous cartoon showing mining magnate and politician Cecil John Rhodes straddling the African continent with a telegraph wire in his hands. This is a visual representation of Rhodes’ famous desire to connect the British colonies in Africa by means of rail and telegraph lines stretching all the way from Cape Town to Cairo.
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