Digital print honoring Tess Asplund, SHOW UP, part of the perSISTERS series. Tess, a Swedish protester, is famous for the photograph this design is based on.
I print the inkjet prints on my Epson large format archival printer in my studio. The color is very fine. I trim it and package it in a crystal clear sleeve with cardboard backing and information included in the sleeve, on the back. The larger print I ship in a tube. The offset 8 x 10 print is from a previous year's calendar and has some printing on the back. Also available on stretched canvas which is ready to hang and shipped from a third party fabricator: please allow 1 week to 10 days for delivery. The smaller pieces are printed offset lithography in the USA. The magnets are shiny wrapped metal.

Tess Asplund, born in 1974, is a Swedish activist who gained attention because of her protest against neo-Nazis in Borlänge, Sweden. David Lagerlof is the photographer of the viral image, which shows Asplund facing 300 uniformed members of the Swedish Nordic Resistance Movement with her fist in the air. She is originally from Colombia and describes herself as Afro-Swedish. “It was an impulse. I was so angry, I just went out into the street,” Asplund told the Guardian. “I was thinking: hell no, they can’t march here! I had this adrenaline. No Nazi is going to march here, it’s not okay.” “I hope something positive will come out of the picture. Maybe what I did can be a symbol that we can do something—if one person can do it, anyone can.”
(based on Wikipedia and the Guardian)
DESIGN NOTE
I began the perSISTERS series with three iconic images of women protesters (these will be on the shop soon, meanwhile check out my blog at LedaBlack.com): Danuta Danielsson, “BE BRAVE” (woman hitting a neo-Nazi over the head with her handbag), Ieshia Evans, “BE PRESENT” (the awesomely poised woman in a breezy sun dress getting arrested by three riot police looking like intergalactic warriors), and this one. In all of these I have cropped in to focus on the woman’s figure, stressing that she is the agent in the tableau. (You can also see this effect in the Ruby Bridges design.) I had just experienced the DC Women’s March and I was captivated by the idea of putting my body in a particular space at a particular time in order to communicate a message of power.
As I was working with this image I was drawing a path around the figure and her bag. Zoomed in, I saw how lumpy her bag is, and I realized she had her groceries in there. She was out doing her shopping when she was called to stand in that place at that time in that way. She was already there, but then she “Showed Up” with a very fundamental posture of resistance. My work in the perSISTERS series is my posture of resistance. Shortly after this photo was captured the police officer in the background pulled Asplund out of the way of the marchers.