ABSTRACT

My Anti Day-Glo Fatwa. With this title French street artist Princess Hijab launched her manifesto opposing the hierarchical cacophony of commercial culture with its Day­glo flashy images and excessive fakes. In this brief man­ ifesto, Princess Hijab laments “the howls of people’s laughter” as amount­ ing to “ominous hysterics that smash reason” and sums up her stance in the world as follows: “Let me tell you about my attitude: straight edge in behavior and language”. The metaphorical straight edge mentioned here is reflected in the black permanent marker’s contours that shape her art. Acting mostly at night in the Parisian metro stations, Princess Hijab intervenes on commercial billboards and posters by donning the frequently undressed bod­ ies of their models with a black hijab. Her targets include disparate images of Western culture: Dolce and Gabbana’s underwear collection featuring the Italian men’s swim team; Virgin’s risqué billboard with a naked female model whose body is branded with the motto “The culture of pleasure” (‘la culture du plaisir’); several images of H&M models wearing bikinis; the patriotically three­colored body of a Galeries Lafayette model; Megan Fox’s close­up shot in the poster for her 2009 dark comedy “Jennifer’s Body”; the flying naked body of Maya Barsony in the cover of her second album “Femme d’exterieur”; Cinderella as she dances with Prince Charming; and the cover of France’s most popular female rapper Diam’s’ album “Ma France à moi”, a heartfelt call for an updated and inclusive sense of Frenchness.1