Illustration made for the last CHEAP (Street Poster Art Festival in the city of Bologna) ICONS call for posters. Each edition celebrates a different deceased icon, a divertissement aimed at those who deal with visual languages to celebrate different icons that are no longer between us. This year was the amazing and kaleidoscopic White Duke, Starman, Ziggy Stardust, The Man Who Fell To Earth... more commonly known as David Bowie.
To celebrate his genderless way of life I decided to make a 70's vibe lettering of the great song Rebel Rebel, choosing this part of the lyrics:
[...] you got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl
Hey babe, your hair's all right
Hey babe, let's go out tonight [...]
In the center, an ethereal Bowie wearing the iconic "Tokyo Pop" bodysuit designed by Kensai Yamamoto for the Aladdin Sane tour in 1973, where "Bowie and fashion merged to become a genderless sculpture".
Below the first draft of the design
For this call for posters I had many different ideas, here's the sketch of idea n° 2, with the lyrics of Space Oddity
... and sketch for idea n° 3, where my pedantic self comes forward.
It says "It's pronounced David Bòui, not David Bàui" (in Italy his name is almost always mispronounced). Unfortunately it was possible to send just one poster, otherwise I would have send this as well.
