Shepard Fairey OBEY Freedom of Choice 2017 Signed #/400 Damaged Stencil
Edition of #/400|18" x 24"
About the work
About This Piece
Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art
Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Freedom of Choice — Damaged Stencil Series
2017 Offset Lithograph · Numbered Edition of 400 · Hand-Signed & Numbered · One of Eight in the Set ★ Originally Sold ONLY as a Complete 8-Print Set — Individual prints from the Damaged Stencil Series are scarce on the secondary market and rarely surface alone. Tied to Fairey's largest solo exhibition, "DAMAGED" at Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles. What You Are Getting
This is Shepard Fairey's Freedom of Choice — a densely layered, text-driven offset lithograph printed in deep black ink on cream Speckletone paper, from the celebrated 2017 "Damaged Stencil Series." It is part of a set of eight prints released together in December 2017 to accompany Fairey's largest-ever solo exhibition, DAMAGED, at Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles. The series was sold exclusively as a complete 8-print set: individual prints were never available separately at retail, making single examples genuinely scarce on the secondary market.
The composition is one of the most text-saturated and confrontational in the entire series. At center, an authority figure — military officer or police commander — with a skull-and-crossbones badge on his peaked cap looks upward, surrounded by a battery of charged phrases: "Freedom of Choice" arched above in bold stencil lettering; "Support" in flowing script; "OUTRAGE" in block capitals; and the starkest directive of all — "Choose: SILENCE or FEAR — OBEY." A silhouetted map of the United States drips overhead, flanked by a butterfly. The background is a dense photographic collage: currency engravings, botanical damask patterns, and layered ephemera — all rendered in the same black-on-cream monochrome palette that ties the series together.
The title's irony is deliberate and sharp. "Freedom of Choice" is presented not as a genuine offering but as a coercive false binary: choose silence, or choose fear — both lead to obedience. The authority figure does not need to threaten overtly; the architecture of his uniform, the skull badge, the language of "support" repurposed as compulsion, does the work for him. Fairey is dissecting the mechanism by which institutional power manufactures consent. The work is a visual essay on manufactured compliance, and it lands with the blunt urgency of a propaganda leaflet turned against itself.
Print Details Artist Shepard Fairey (OBEY) Title Freedom of Choice Series Damaged Stencil Series (8-print set) Year 2017 (December release) Medium Offset lithograph — single-color black ink on cream Speckletone paper Colors Black on cream/off-white — monochrome (not multi-color) Size 18" × 24" (46 × 61 cm) Edition Numbered edition of 400 — hand-signed and numbered in pencil Key Text Elements "Freedom of Choice" · "Support" · "OUTRAGE" · "Choose: Silence or Fear" · "OBEY" Key Visual Elements Military/authority figure with skull badge · USA map silhouette · Butterfly · Currency & botanical collage Damaged Borders Ragged, torn-edge borders throughout — intentional printed design elements, not paper damage Signature Hand-signed by Shepard Fairey in pencil (verso or lower margin) Exhibition "DAMAGED" — Subliminal Projects, Los Angeles, December 2017 (Fairey's largest-ever solo show) Publisher Obey Giant / Studio Number One Original retail $160 for the complete 8-print set (sold out at release) Edition Number
Understanding the Visual Language
Freedom of Choice is one of the most explicitly political works in the Damaged Stencil Series — and arguably the most formally complex. Where other prints in the set organize around a central figurative image, this composition fragments authority into competing visual registers simultaneously. The authority figure, the propaganda-era language of "Support," the blunt brutalism of "OUTRAGE" and "OBEY," and the flowery commercial script of "Choice" all exist in the same visual field, colliding rather than resolving. This deliberate visual dissonance is Fairey's formal argument: the language of freedom and the language of coercion have become indistinguishable.
The dripping USA map is a recurring motif in Fairey's post-2016 work — the nation as a leaking vessel, its institutions bleeding authority and legitimacy. The butterfly, fragile and incongruously beautiful, appears in the upper field as a counterweight: a symbol of transformation and fragility against the print's otherwise heavy institutional machinery. The currency-engraving background and botanical damask layers reference both the aesthetics of official state documents and the decorative veneer that masks power structures — beauty as camouflage. This is Fairey at his most layered and most urgent.
The Complete Damaged Stencil Series — All 8 Prints
This is one of eight prints in the Damaged Stencil Series, each 18" × 24" offset on cream Speckletone, edition of 400:
· Natural Springs — Woman with headscarf holding dripping lotus; oil derrick warning symbol · Peace Guard 2 — Armored figure with flowers in gun barrel · Learn to Obey — Boy scout figure saluting a dollar-sign sun; USA propaganda aesthetic ★ Freedom of Choice — Authority figure with skull badge; "Choose: Silence or Fear — OBEY" (This Print) · Proud Parents — Family portrait with subversive layering · Printing Press — Typography and press imagery · My Florist Is a Dick — Satirical consumer culture critique · Sinking Liberty — Statue of Liberty partially submergedAbout the DAMAGED Exhibition Fairey on the exhibition and series concept: "DAMAGED is an honest diagnosis, but diagnosis is the first step to recognizing and solving problems. I definitely think that art can be part of the solution because it can inspire people to look at an issue they might otherwise ignore or reject." The December 2017 exhibition at Subliminal Projects — Fairey's own gallery space in Los Angeles — was his most ambitious solo show to date, assembling work that directly addressed the political climate following the 2016 election: democratic erosion, environmental rollback, media manipulation, and corporate capture of public institutions. Freedom of Choice, with its direct deployment of coercive propaganda language turned against the institutions that produce it, sits at the ideological core of that project.
About the Artist — Shepard Fairey (OBEY)
Born 1970 in Charleston, South Carolina, Shepard Fairey studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and launched his career with the Andre the Giant Has a Posse wheat-paste campaign — one of the first viral street art movements — which evolved into the global OBEY brand. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, MoMA New York, LACMA, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. His 2008 Obama HOPE poster remains one of the most recognized political images of the 21st century. The Damaged Stencil Series represents a return to his most uncompromising roots: stripped-down, urgent, undecorated — propaganda aesthetics turned against propaganda itself.
What Is Included
- Original Shepard Fairey Freedom of Choice offset lithograph, Damaged Stencil Series, 2017
- Hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey
- Hand-numbered in pencil — numbered edition of 400
- Single-color black offset on cream Speckletone paper — unframed, stored flat
- Gauntlet Gallery digital provenance documentation
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More Shepard Fairey & Street Art at Gauntlet Gallery We carry an ever-rotating selection of authenticated Shepard Fairey prints — political editions, environmental works, floral patterns, letterpress prints, and large-format silkscreens — alongside Banksy, Death NYC, and signed music collectibles. Looking for other prints from the Damaged Stencil Series? Message us — we may have additional titles available. Add us to your Saved Sellers to be notified when new Fairey inventory drops. Gauntlet Gallery · Authenticated Street Art & Collectibles Since 2012 · View All Listings
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Few contemporary artists have bridged underground culture and institutional recognition as effectively as Shepard Fairey. Emerging from skate and punk subcultures with the original Obey Giant campaign, he built a visual language rooted in propaganda aesthetics, bold iconography, and political commentary.
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