Who's Who

Shepard FAIREY aka OBEY

First and foremost, Shepard FAIREY is a true street artist.

He started his career in 1989 in PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island. In order to pay his tuition fees he worked in a skate shop were he used his skills and whatever he could lay his hands on to make t-shirts, stickers, etc. To show a skater friend how easy it was to screen-print things, he found a picture of the famous 80’s wrestler ANDRE THE GIANT and used the magazine picture to create a stencil he then went on to create stickers with: the now famous ANDRE THE GIANT HAS A POSSE was born. The artist then started to gain viral success as people started to photocopy his stickers to cover skateparks, car bumpers, etc. After using the ANDRE THE GIANT picture as a stencil, OBEY would then make it into a poster in 1993, changing his entire style at the same time by sticking his paper creations on walls all around him. To stay clear of judicial trouble FAIREY would pass his posters for promotion for musical artists and would never admit to it being art for fear of being identified as a graffiti artist and therefore more heavily fined. After New York, OBEY started to invade the streets of San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego.

In 1995 he would sign his creations with the word OBEY for the first time. His artist name is inspired by John Carpenter’s “Invasion LOS ANGELES (They live)” and is a way for him to reject the consumer society surrounding him all the while inspiring everyone to decrypt the messages we are sent on a daily basis; OBEY also as a wake up call to people who don’t realise they are acting as nice and disciplined people, unwittingly slaves to the orders they are given.

Shepard FAIREY has always declared himself close to the HEIDEGGER philosophy and phenomenology, the art of awakening our sense of questioning our environment. He would then later choose to diversify his artistic support by creating his own brand: OBEY CLOTHING which is basically just another means of communicating his art.