Keith Haring & Thirza Schaap: Contemporary Artists Who Best Relate to My Invented Culture

Keith Haring was born in 1958 in Pennsylvania and went to graphic design school but dropped out because he decided he did not want to pursue design as a career. He produced graffiti art from the late 70s to early 90s in New York before he died of AIDS. He was a political and social activist and liked to draw attention to his causes through his art on walls on New York City, like with chalk drawings on subway walls. His characters are iconic, colorful, and stylized, like my GoGo Culture characters. In the Grace Jones photo above, where Keith Haring decorated her body, it looks very tribal like some of my GoGo characters I drew from the actual collection of toys. Because of Keith's stand on being an activist on social issues that were important to him and the style of his work, I believe he best represents my culture as a contemporary artist.

Credit: http://www.haring.com/

Thirza Schaap is a Dutch artist born in 1971. She graduated from the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague in 1996. She moved to Captetown, South Africa, to be closer to nature after working for years in the advertising industry in the Netherlands. She is a photographer and aritist and combs beaches for plastic debris and pollution. She wants to get a message out to society to use less plastic, create less pollution, and conserve nature. Her most widely regarded project is entitled Plastic Ocean. She sparks a conversation with the viewer about environmental conservatism. Her photographic artwork is for sale online and purchasers hang her work in their homes and offices. I think it's an elegant way to portray the Plastic Pollution problem, the problem of my culture, and to bring attention to it.
Credits:
https://plastic-ocean.net/
https://mygobe.com/explore/conversations-on-plastic-with-thirza-schaap/