Russian Artists’ Racist Projection Wishes Obama a Happy Birthday

A racist laser projection of Barack Obama from the Moscow Student Initiative. Photo: Moscow Student Initiative.

As President Obama was quietly celebrating his 53rd birthday with a round of golf, a group of Russian artists called the Moscow Student Initiative marked the occasion by projecting a crudely executed, racist laser art show onto the facade of the US embassy in Moscow, reports Gawker.

The image showed the president, wearing a striped party hat, eating a banana in a decidedly sexual manner. The supposed “gift to Barack Obama,” as the Student Initiative described the piece on VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, also flashed the words “happy birthday” and “Obama.”

A racist banner of Barack Obama from the Moscow Student Initiative. Photo: Moscow Student Initiative.

A racist banner of Barack Obama from the Moscow Student Initiative. Photo: Moscow Student Initiative.

As if one public display in terribly poor taste wasn’t enough, the group also hung a banner near the embassy that depicted three caricatures of the president accentuating his rather large ears. Wearing a red party hat decorated with a party clown, the three Obamas are posed like the “Three Wise Monkeys” who see no, hear no, and speak no evil, but with the accompanying message “I don’t see. I don’t hear. I don’t speak the truth to anybody!”

The Moscow Student Initiative, a self-described “art group, a circle of common interests, activists, students, [and] patriots” may want to look inward and reflect on how such racist imagery relates to their supposedly patriotic activism.

Check out the video of the lo-tech display:


Follow Artnet News on Facebook:


Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.
Article topics