The World Cup In 32 Murals

With the football World Cup about to land on South African shores in less than 10 days time there is a tone of awesome work around the tournament that has been popping up. From some brilliant television ads - some of which we covered last week - to a giant vuvuzela that has appeared on a uncompleted highway in Cape Town we are kind of spoilt for choice on the creativity front. Having said this last week I came across a campaign that really hit home.

Titled "The World Cup In 32 Murals" it is a campaign that comes from ESPN who are providing major coverage of the World Cup which as well as covering the games includes short and feature-length documentary films. As a part of the campaign to make people aware of this coverage they got in touch with the I AM Collective, a group of artists based in Cape Town South Africa, and who put together 32 murals—one for each team—that will appear in publications and on subway platforms and billboards in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere from now through mid-July. Co-incidently the I AM Collective also produced the poster for the World Cup opening concert, in Soweto on June 10.

I like a number of things about this campaign but specifically I love the way that each mural has a story written into it - for Slovenia, the smallest country in the tournament, one of the team’s players stands before a slain bear with a sword held high. The bear represents Russia, which Slovenia upset to make it to the tournament, and the player’s defiant pose seems to be a challenge to the other teams in Slovenia’s group: Algeria, England, and the USA. I also love the fact that the murals are done in the style of old Ghanaian movie posters from the 1980's. The trounament may be happening in South Africa but it really does belong to all Africans and to me this is a perfect admission of this. If you are interested Vanity Fair has an awesome article on their site that uses the murals as a backing for a short blurb on all the teams taking part in the tournament - I highly recommend checking it out here.

Algeria: Les Fennecs (The White and Red) / Cameroon: Le Lions Indomptables

Chile: La Roja (The Red One) / Denmark: Olsen's Eleven

England: The Three Lions / France: Les Blues

Ghana: The Black Stars / Greece: The Pirate Ship

Honduras: Los Catrachos / Ivory Coast: Les Elephants

Japan: Sumurai Blue / Mexico: El Tri (The Three Coloured)

New Zealand: The All Whites / Nigeria: The Super Eagles

North Korea: Chollima (The Winged Horse) / Paraguay: La Albirroja (The White and Red)

Serbia: Beli Orlovi (The White Eagles) / Slovakia: The Fighting Jondas

Slovenia: Zamajecki (Dragons) / South Africa: Bafana Bafana (The Boys, The Boys)

South Korea: Taeguk Warriors / Switzerland: Schweizer Nati

Uruguay: La Celest (The Sky Blue) / USA: The Yanks

Argentina: La Albiceleste (White and Blue Sky) / Germany: Die Mannschaft 

Italy: I Azzurri / Netherlands: The Flying Dutchmen