ARTIST STATEMENT
As a feminist artist I join protests using my art: spray bottles, drapes, and flags. Sometimes I discover my face on stock photo sites. This Getty Images photo, taken during the DNC in Chicago in 2024, was used as a cover image on the right-wing Breitbart website and other extremist platforms like the Daily Caller and The Daily Wire. Was I lucky that they didn’t know my name? Today, it’s getting more dangerous to speak out, the Trump regime revokes visas when people protest the genocide in Gaza. Welcome to The Land of The Free.
The American flag made with abortion pills in the photo is made by feminist artist Michele Pred. The T-shirt I wear is made by woman-led creative studio Abortion Rights Barbie, by Blue for the Win. I’m holding flyers and a pink pro-abortion flag (partly visible).
If you buy this image, the money will go to the photographer Dominic Gwinn, and I will get nothing.
In 2022, I moved from Amsterdam to New York, and the first thing I had to buy was a spray can of Raid to get rid of the roaches. Unpleasant but very effective. This sparked the idea of a new body of work. As an artivist, I want to create art contributing to a better world. And wouldn’t it be convenient if we could spray away all nasty things in our society? I started creating a growing collection of more than 250 spray cans and bottles: Pest AC. For A Better World. Bold, humorous, and colorful. I execute them in various media like solid cast resin transparent spray bottles, flags, and printed and woven wall tapestries.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Airco Caravan (b. the Netherlands) earned a BA at HKU, the Academy of Arts Utrecht, the Netherlands. After a career in advertising and graphic design, Caravan returned to art, studied silk screening at MK24 in Amsterdam, and oil painting at The Art Students League of New York.
Caravan has participated in international exhibitions like Into Action 2024 in Chicago, Healers and Dreamers, Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City, Every Woman Biennial in New York, Museum de Fundatie, MOTI Museum, Amsterdam Museum, MOYA Vienna, Arte Museum Korea, and Museum of Memory and Tolerance, Mexico City. Solo shows in Amsterdam and New York. Creator of attention-grabbing guerrilla art in the public domain, including an illegal 4ft bronze statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The artist was invited to artist residencies ArtCrawl Harlem on Governors Island, De Torenkamer, Amsterdam, and Boeddha in de Linie, in solitude in a bunker. Her art was included in the collections of Amsterdam Museum, Museum Van Loon, Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, Westfries Museum, the Netherlands, Nobel Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN, and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, LA, USA. Caravan was the founder and curator of two Nasty Women Amsterdam fundraiser exhibitions and curator of several group shows in Amsterdam.
© Airco Caravan