Rosa vs. the Far Right: The Charity Art Print Against the AfD

There is a pink pigeon in my shop who has picked a side. Her name is Rosa, the painting is called Rosa vs. the Far Right, and she is not being subtle about it.

The artwork is deliberately anti-AfD. It stands against far-right extremism, racism, antisemitism, anti-LGBTQ+ hostility and against politics that pit people against one another. That is not a subtext I am hiding in the colours. That is the entire point of her.

Everything about the campaign lives on one page: Rosa vs. the Far Right. This is the story behind it.

Why I did not just post a statement

Posting a statement is easy. You write something on a Monday, people nod, and by Wednesday the feed has moved on. Nothing changed except that you feel slightly better about yourself.

I wanted the opposite of that. Something slow, repeatable and a bit boring: a piece that keeps sending money to people doing the actual work, long after the outrage cycle has moved on to the next thing.

So this is not a campaign weekend. Rosa stays in the shop permanently, and the donation goes out as long as she sells.

Where the money goes

Every donation from this campaign goes to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. They work against far-right extremism, racism and antisemitism, and they strengthen democratic culture and civil society engagement in Germany.

I chose them because I wanted an organisation where a stance turns into practical work, not into a nicer-sounding mission statement. People doing education, counselling and support for those who are actually targeted.

You can read about their work on the foundation's own site. One thing to be clear about: this is an independent initiative of mine. It is not an official partnership with the foundation and not an endorsement by them.

The numbers, without percentage maths

As a buyer I find "a share of proceeds goes to charity" mildly irritating. A share of what? Before or after costs? Of the profit, which nobody outside the shop can check?

So I fixed the amount per item instead:

Hand-signed charity art print: 35 euro purchase price, 28 euro donated.

Printable art download: 9,90 euro purchase price, the full 9,90 euro donated.

That is the whole formula. Two prints are 56 euro. Ten prints are 280 euro. Four downloads are 39,60 euro. You can do the maths yourself, which is exactly the idea.

The print is hand-signed, numbered and embossed by me. The download is the digital file to print yourself, no shipping involved, and the entire price of it leaves my account again.

A counter that does the accounting in public

Announcing a donation and showing it are two different things, so the campaign page now has a counter on it. It adds up the real sales: the number of hand-signed prints at 28 euro plus the number of downloads at 9,90 euro.

It counts paid orders only. Cancelled orders do not count, and if something gets refunded, the amount comes back off the total. There is no pretty rounding up.

It is uncomfortable in a useful way. When the number is small, it is small in public. I would rather have that than a vague claim nobody can check.

Why a print instead of a donation button

You can donate to the Amadeu Antonio Foundation directly and skip me completely. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and it says so on the campaign page.

What a print does that a bank transfer cannot is hang on a wall. It sits in a room where people see it, and it keeps having the conversation when you are not in the mood to have it. A donation is private. A picture of a pink pigeon against the far right is not.

This is also not the first time I have tied a painting to something outside itself. With Bad Signal, Good Transition, 20 percent of what the hand-signed prints bring in goes to Bundesverband Trans*.

Of course she is a pigeon

If you have been around my work for a while, the choice of animal will not surprise you. Pigeons keep showing up in my paintings, in top hats, with pizza, on sincere dates.

For this one it fits better than anything else I could have painted. A pigeon is the bird everybody calls a pest. She lives in the gaps of a city that was not built for her, eats what other people drop, and walks around with the posture of someone far more important. Being told you do not belong and carrying on anyway is the whole story.

Her being pink is not a coincidence either. Taking a stand is allowed to be loud and a bit ridiculous.

Where to find Rosa

Both versions are on the campaign page, together with the current donation total:

Hand-signed charity art print, 35 euro, of which 28 euro is donated.

Printable art download, 9,90 euro, all of which is donated.

If you buy one, you are not doing me a favour. You are putting a pink pigeon on your wall and 28 euro into work that needs doing. I think that is a fair trade.