In Athens, February 8, 2019 young Embuka was beaten to death in a central police precinct. His relatives were seeking to find him for days. Arts and music collective Antifa lab chose a provocative interference to make the killing known to wider audiences. They chose to write on a well-known commercial artwork commissioned by a sports industry. The artworks image is of Giannis Antetokounmpo -now a global superstar, who has experienced what it is growing being a poor immigrant of African descent in Greece. The collective chose to comment Embuka’s death and similar acts of authoritarian violence writing on the drawing’s background that ‘if Antetokounmpo was not playing in the NBA, he might be dead in Omonoia police precinct’.
However, their act did not actually vandalised the artwork. They showed respect to Giannis’ figure and only did write on the solid colour surface next to him allowing this way the easy repair of the whole picture.
They made pictures afterwards and let the media know. The media-including popular sports websites- subsequently published new articles and pictures also mentioning the original source. In such a way they also triggered a web discourse on the web forums.
Orestis Pangalos