When I made this poster I did not know much about Benazir Bhutto. The media proclaimed she was a “martyred democrat” from Pakistan, but as a man who is always skeptical of anything said in the main stream media, I had to see what the other side of the story could be.
Today, Benazir is being hailed as a martyr for freedom and democracy, but far from being a natural democrat, in many ways, Benazir was the person who brought Pakistan’s strange variety of democracy, really a form of ‘elective feudalism’, into disrepute and who helped fuel the current, apparently unstoppable, growth of the Islamists. During her first 20-month premiership, astonishingly, she failed to pass a single piece of major legislation. Amnesty International accused her government of having one of the world’s worst records of custodial deaths, killings and torture.
Within her party, she declared herself the lifetime president of the PPP and refused to let her brother Murtaza challenge her. When he persisted in doing so, he ended up shot dead in highly suspicious circumstances outside the family home. Murtaza’s wife Ghinwa and his daughter Fatima, as well as Benazir’s mother, all firmly believed that Benazir gave the order to have him killed. — William Dalrymple
It is impossible to draw a clear conclusion on which theory to side with. Bhutto started out as a symbol of the people, but over the years, was a supporter of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. I wanted to create a poster as a tribute to her life that included mixed metaphors about her motives. The stained glass windows and golden halo are Catholic imagery and hidden in the center is the Eye of Providence that was adopted as part of the symbolism on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States.
I ended up printing 7 layers of ink on the poster. ( Yellow, red, blue, green, black, gold and a transparent layer to make the gold burst! ) After stepping away from the print I realized the lack of a mid-tone in the window was causing Benazir to appear flat. I went back into the print with a light gray water based marker to help push the background back and the figure forward.
