„The rights of artists to express themselves freely are under threat worldwide...”

Deeyah Khan, Unesco Ambassador for Artistic Freedom and Creativity

STROKE Art Fair supports artists that are bold enough to defend and articulate their point of view. STROKE embraces the importance of the freedom of expression in arts and entertainment: a human right as of 1948 set out in Article 19 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Together with street artist ‘Capo’s Finest’, an immersive online gallery was created – based on large scale watercolor portraits on Khadi hand- made paper. A courageous look at 8 political leaders and their decisions – interpreted as tattoos, symbolizing irrevocability of political actions.

Each motif is mirrored by handpicked content snippets from a wide range of global news portals.

Every user is invited to download the portraits including article 19, share the online gallery and spread the spirit of resistance.

By creating the digital gallery scars-of-democracy.com , we decided to arrange the 8 politicians in a dark, sombre atmosphere in order to emphasize the meaning of the things they tried to keep from the public eye. For maximum user experience, we didn’t squeeze the artwork onto miniature mobile screens: it's desktop only. Starting with a compact introduction video – which serves to sensitize the viewer on the right to freedom of opinion and expression – the user can then browse through the digital vernissage via an intelligent left/right navigation to have a closer look at the preferred statesman.

By hovering, interactive content modules let you get under the skin of the ‘real news’ stories behind each tattoo.

Accompanied by an out-of-home flight, we launched the online experience on World Design Day on April 27th , 2018 and invited the entire internet to find out about the inconvenient truth.

The end goal of all of this? To make visitors and users realize that artistic freedom is not a luxury of humanity, but a fundamental right – one that is always worth fighting for. As we just launched shortly before the entry deadline ended we can not yet provide meaningful data.