Shepard Fairey Obey Giant Listen AP 12.5” Revolutionary Love Series Print
Edition of AP|12.5"
About the work
About This Piece
Shepard Fairey
“Listen” (Revolutionary Love Series)
Artist’s Proof • 2021
Screen Print on Thick Cream Speckletone Paper • 12″ × 12″
Hand-Signed in Pencil • Artist’s Proof (AP)
Shepard Fairey × Amplifier × The Revolutionary Love Project
What You Are Getting
An Artist’s Proof (AP) of Shepard Fairey’s “Listen” — one of ten designs in the Revolutionary Love series, created in collaboration with Amplifier and The Revolutionary Love Project founded by civil rights leader Valarie Kaur. This 12″ × 12″ screen print on thick cream Speckletone paper features a central padlock with lotus flower and key encircled by a laurel wreath and radiating mandala petals, with the word “LISTEN” inscribed in a banner at the base. Hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey in the lower right margin, with “AP” notation in pencil in the lower left.
The numbered edition of this series was limited to 250 sets, released December 21, 2021 via the Obey Giant store. Artist’s Proofs exist outside that numbered run and are typically produced in far smaller quantities — making this AP designation significantly rarer than numbered impressions from the standard edition.
Print Details
Artist Shepard Fairey (b. 1970, Charleston, SC) Title “Listen” Series Revolutionary Love (2021) — collaboration with Amplifier and The Revolutionary Love Project Year 2021 Medium Screen print on thick cream Speckletone paper Size 12″ × 12″ (30.5 × 30.5 cm) Edition Artist’s Proof (AP) — outside the numbered edition of 250 Signature Hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey (lower right). “AP” notation in pencil (lower left). Color Palette Dark navy/black, cream/white, light blue accents, red ornamental corner flourishes Publisher Obey Giant • Los Angeles, California Condition Excellent. Print is clean, colors vibrant, no damage. Please review all photos — they show the exact item you will receive.About the Work
At the center of the composition sits a padlock bearing a lotus flower, with a key still inserted — a lock that could be opened or locked depending on the viewer’s interpretation. Fairey surrounds this central icon with a laurel wreath (a classical symbol of honor and victory) nested inside a radiating lotus mandala with petals rendered in light blue and cream against a dark navy field. Red ornamental flourishes anchor the four corners, and a banner at the base carries a single imperative: “LISTEN.”
The padlock-and-key is a charged symbol in Fairey’s visual vocabulary. It appears across his body of work as a metaphor for access, control, and the choice between openness and restriction. Paired with the lotus — which in Buddhist and Hindu traditions represents purity rising from muddy water, spiritual awakening, and the possibility of transformation — the locked padlock becomes a question rather than a statement: what are you keeping locked, and what would happen if you turned the key?
The word “LISTEN” grounds all of this in the civic context of the Revolutionary Love series. In Valarie Kaur’s framework, listening is the first and most radical act of love — the willingness to hear someone whose experience is different from your own before reacting, judging, or turning away. Fairey’s image argues that this kind of listening isn’t passive. It requires unlocking something inside yourself.
The Revolutionary Love Series
The Revolutionary Love series was a 2021 collaboration between Shepard Fairey, Amplifier (a Seattle-based nonprofit that uses art as a tool for social change), and The Revolutionary Love Project founded by Valarie Kaur — a Sikh-American civil rights leader, filmmaker, and lawyer whose TED Talk on revolutionary love has been viewed millions of times.
The series comprises ten 12″ × 12″ screen prints, each featuring a different imperative word rendered in Fairey’s signature mandala-and-icon visual language. Each design draws from Fairey’s most recognized motifs — lotus flowers, laurel wreaths, radiating lines, ornamental borders — recombined into compositions that function as both standalone artworks and visual calls to action.
The complete set of ten prints was released on December 21, 2021 at 10 AM PDT via store.obeygiant.com in a foil-embossed box with certificate of authentication, edition of 250 sets, at $300. All ten prints were individually signed and numbered by Fairey in pencil, with matching edition numbers across each set.
About Amplifier: Founded in 2015 and based in Seattle, Amplifier is a nonprofit design lab that commissions artwork from leading artists and distributes it freely to communities, classrooms, and organizers. Their campaigns have placed over 1 million pieces of public art on walls, in newspapers, and in schools across the United States. Their highest-profile collaboration with Fairey was the “We The People” series (2017), which became one of the most visible artworks of the Women’s March era.
Why This AP Matters
ARTIST’S PROOF • OUTSIDE NUMBERED EDITIONThis print is designated AP (Artist’s Proof) — a designation reserved for impressions pulled outside the numbered edition, typically for the artist’s personal use, gallery placement, or sale through private channels. In fine art printmaking, APs are produced in much smaller quantities than the numbered run (industry standard is typically 10% of the edition or fewer). For a series with a numbered edition of 250, Artist’s Proofs are substantially rarer than standard numbered impressions.
AP impressions are identical in quality and printing to the numbered edition — they come from the same screens, the same ink runs, the same paper stock. The difference is scarcity and provenance. In the secondary market, APs consistently command a premium over their numbered counterparts because of their limited availability and their closer association with the artist’s personal archive.
About the Artist
Shepard Fairey (b. 1970, Charleston, South Carolina) is one of the most influential artists of his generation. He emerged from the skateboarding and punk scenes of the late 1980s at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he created the “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” sticker campaign that evolved into the globally recognized OBEY GIANT phenomenon. His 2008 HOPE portrait of Barack Obama became one of the most iconic political images in American history and is held in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.
Fairey’s work synthesizes influences from Russian Constructivism, propaganda art, skateboard graphics, and punk rock into a visual language that is instantly recognizable and deeply engaged with social and political issues. He has painted over 140 public murals worldwide, founded Studio Number One (a design agency) and OBEY Clothing, and maintains one of the most active print practices in contemporary art — with hundreds of signed limited editions released through store.obeygiant.com since the early 2000s. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Smithsonian, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.
What Is Included
- Shepard Fairey “Listen” screen print — Artist’s Proof (AP), 12″ × 12″ on thick cream Speckletone paper
- Hand-signed in pencil by Shepard Fairey with AP notation
- Ships unframed, flat, with archival protection
Shipping
Ships flat with rigid backing and archival-quality protective materials. Tracking included, fully insured. International buyers welcome — customs fees may apply upon delivery.
From the same collection: We carry an extensive selection of Shepard Fairey signed limited edition screen prints, letterpress prints, and collaborative works. Search “Gauntlet Gallery” on eBay to browse the full selection.GAUNTLET GALLERY
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SHEPARD FAIREY
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.
What makes Fairey compelling for collectors isn’t just name recognition — it’s durability. His work sits at the intersection of activism, design, and pop culture. \
From the globally recognized Hope poster to decades of tightly controlled screenprint editions, he has demonstrated both cultural relevance and disciplined market structure.
Institutional validation from MoMA, the Smithsonian, and the V&A reinforces long-term credibility. Meanwhile, secondary market data shows consistent liquidity and steady appreciation across core prints.
For collectors, this is cultural equity with infrastructure behind it — not trend-driven volatility.
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