17. OBEDIANT WORKERS: Eat Sleep Die, 100*70 cm, 2024
If I were to mention sources of inspiration for this poster, I would have to refer to many things. The recent album by Bahram Nouraei, a famous Iranian rapper, titled "Khodha," is one of them. The album is very thematic and powerful, addressing the issue of becoming/being a pig in more than 10 tracks, metaphorically referring to human life of becoming self-alienated. Especially in the track "Ayneh" (Mirror), the chorus of this song uses a metaphor where the phrase "Be a pig and live" [خوک باش و زندگی کن] is repeated in the language of the pig, aiming clearly to persuade subordinates and invite others to this contagious lifestyle.
At the other hand the first visual segment of this poster was inspired by a character with a pig's head and wearing a suit in the film "Pigsty" (1969) by Pier Paolo Pasolini. Although I hadn't seen this film yet, just seeing this image was so influential that inspired me. In much proletarian and anti-capitalist literature, bankers and capitalists are depicted as pigs. But who in today's society isn't looking forward to become a capitalist? In fact, this has become the primary goal of everyone or a significant part of societies.
In the end a culmination of these ideas and several visual studies led to this poster, and in the slogan section at the bottom of the poster, the name of a film with exactly the same title, "Eat Sleep Die," directed by Swedish director Gabriela Pichler, was chosen, which was not directly related to the aforementioned concepts: Rasa, a factory worker, lives with her ill father in a small town. However, when the factory lays her off during a downsizing cycle, she struggles to find a job while looking after her father.