Advertising a significant portion of our visual field—it is a pervasive and now indispensable element to which we have become desensitized making us passive and resigned to the consumption of products and services. Over time it has developed increasingly sophisticated strategies to influence our choices in a profound way. As Edward Bernays argued in his seminal 1928 essay Propaganda, advertising is a practice that exists in direct continuity with the political propaganda of authoritarian regimes: a tool that exploits the masses and their instincts, promising benefits while ultimately seeking control over individual decisions.
It is inevitable that, in response to such totalitarian logic, a form of underground resistance would emerge—a movement of dissent sparked by activists and artists launching a counteroffensive against the dictates of advertising, by hijacking its very messages. From this resistance comes subvertising: a practice that reworks advertisements and overturns their propagandistic language, transforming a tool of control into a cry of protest.
Artists engaged in subvertising, primarily target public advertising spaces, reclaiming not only the physical space itself but also the codes and languages typical of advertising—giving rise to a form of objection that takes the shape of satire. Over the years, many artists and collectives have embraced and spread this practice—from legendary publications like Adbusters, to the work of artists such as Ron English, Alexander Kosolapov, Darren Cullen, and Chris Woods, as well as collectives like Antipub, Brandalism, and Special Patrol Group.
HOGRE’s subversive, irreverent, and playful attitude—shaped through years of working with stencils—found fertile ground in the practice of subvertising. Over the past three years, it has become a means for him to carry out numerous site-specific actions, documented in a publication released in the United Kingdom and culminating in the creation of a digital platform where subverted images become open-source—freely usable and copyright-free.
PROPAGANDA is a retrospective entirely dedicated to this artistic project: a heterogeneous body of work ranging from painted canvases to light boxes, posters, sketches on canvas, screen prints, and stickers. It offers an eclectic focus on a dissident practice that aims to remind us how to remain free thinkers in a system that continually seeks to keep us in submission.