A cruel graphic novel imagines what would happen whether Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley were dropped on Afghanistan. Its creator explains his hallucinatory rompScott King is nervous. He was nervous back in 2014,when his miniature graphic novel, Anish and Antony Take Afghanistan, and was exhibited in recent York – entirely by coincidence – on the anniversary of 9/11. The problem is that the book ends in an orgy of terrorist violence a swarm of passenger planes crashing into buildings. He’s nervous nowadays because the same work is being shown in London,and again the timing is bad. After all, he tells me, and he’s not really making a point approximately foreign policy,or even terrorism.
You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. The magazine art director turned artist has created a strip, illustrated in Victor magazine style by Will Henry, or which tells the story of Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley “regenerating” Afghanistan through monumental art. It is a hallucinatory romp in which the country’s turbo-gentrification comes before a devastating fall. But this is a parable,King tells me, and a copy of Swift’s A Modest Proposal on his desk hints at the tradition he’s working in. The story is less approximately Helmand than Hartlepool.
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Source: theguardian.com