winners of poster contest on the word prostitution

[sam]

You've got to see these entries for a poster contest exploring the meaning of the word "prostitution." They're incredible and a lot of other adjectives.

Leading Zimbabwean graphic designer, Chaz Maviyane-Davies recently had his poster on prostitution selected as one of 36 posters chosen from over 400 posters worldwide to be printed for an exhibition in Venice call the QUANTO project - from November 11 to December 1, 2006.

The Quanto project is an international poster competition asking designers to explore the meaning of the word 'prostitution' both from a moral and a sexual standpoint. The emphasis is to direct attention to the plight of women (especially), who are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation by criminal organizations.

the posters
http://www.quantoproject.com/eng/winners.php

[stormy]

Some very interesting and thought-provoking posters.

[deedle]

Wow. Incredibly moving.

[vmarinelli]

They're completely stunning. Do we know how the designs are to be used? E.g., if a nonprofit working against prostitution wanted to license one off the artist's design for a program logo, how they'd go about that?

On all the translated-from-Italian-into-English pages, I couldn't find any info pertaining to that. Or maybe it was there and I was too tired to see it...

(Yes of course, I have my reasons for asking...)

[stormy]

To use any of the posters you would need to firstly contact Quanto. It may be that they have co- or partial, or majority/full copyright to the competition entries. Further, the artist would need to give permission (even if only a courtesy if 'all' rights were signed away).

[sunnysmiles]

these are truly unbelievable.

[Nieves]

I don't like most of these posters one bit. The supposed irony of representing women as fragmented pieces of meat is lost on an audience that cannot perceive us as otherwise. I feel that some of these posters speak the language of pimps and pornographers.

[sunnysmiles]

You know Nieves, I went back and took a look at them. Some of them I think could be misinterpreted. It's so hard to tell the difference between some activist art vs. advertising nowadays.

But then again, I think context will play an important role - like where people see these posters.

Seeing them altogether is just amazing to me, individually in a cosmo or something - it would work differently.

And this also poses another problem when 'art' loses nuance to just become a 'poster'.

Real 'good' art should stir an emotion in you/make you question something, but when it becomes an 'advertising campaign' for a non-profit organization it becomes very wallpaper...

I dunno...