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They come from a world of underground, even subversive, art, but now US activist Shepard Fairey has joined forces with Britain’s Damien Hirst and French street artist Invader with a “joyful” exhibition to show that even in dark times, there is always hope.

“We all see ourselves as troublemakers because we have been,” Fairey told AFP, ahead of Friday’s opening of a new London exhibition of the three men’s individual works, but also unique hybrid pieces combining elements of all their different styles.

The exhibition called Triple Trouble took some 18 months to put together and was “born from us all liking each other’s work,” said Fairey.

He shot to global fame when he designed the iconic ‘Hope’ poster for the 2008 US presidential campaign of Barack Obama — elected America’s first African-American president. His street art piece, created after the 2015 Paris attacks, featuring the French national symbol Marianne, hangs in the office of French President Emmanuel Macron.

British painter and sculptor Hirst, who has dominated the UK contemporary art scene since the 1990s, is known for provocative works examining death, including animals such as pickled sharks or a bisected cow displayed in a tank of formaldehyde. Hirst’s works can now command prices stretching into millions of pounds.

Invader is a French urban artist who guards his anonymity behind masks and whose mosaics, based on the pixellated art of the original 1978 video game Space Invaders inhabit city walls worldwide.

The three friends began some time ago to think of working collaboratively. “I think often artists are seen as very egotistical and unwilling to share or collaborate easily, but this was a joyful process,” Fairey said.

“I think in this moment of division culturally, the idea that even people as difficult as artists can come together, it’s a nice sentiment,” he added.

Infiltrate the system

“We all proposed ideas to each other. A lot of the pieces were shipped back and forth between our studios,” Fairey said, adding, “But I think the spirit of the work, if anyone looks around, it’s joyful, it’s playful.”

In London’s large, airy Newport Street Gallery, all of the works on display have been revisited. In one of Fairey’s paintings, ‘The Flames of Discontent’, a leather-jacketed young woman painted in his distinctive poster style, walking into fir,e is accompanied by Hirst’s butterflies and Invader’s instantly recognisable space invaders characters.

“I’ve always embraced what I call the inside-outside strategy. Punk rock and graffiti, and hip hop were influences for me, skateboarding, which are all counterculture,” Fairey said. “My idea was, if you can infiltrate the system and change it for the better within, that’s actually a really amazing bit of subversion and detriment.”

But with their artistic success, other questions have arisen.

“What’s authentic, what’s too commercial? These are things that anyone who has a career arc where they go from not being well-known to being well-known has to consider,” Fairey asked. “For me, it’s always been about maintaining my principles.”.

He acknowledged that, since the hope that accompanied the first flushes of the Obama years, “we’re seeing a backslide now”.

“But I think there’s always hope to be had, because even places that have had some of the darkest, most cruel moments in our history, like Germany, Germany is now a very progressive place,” Fairey argued, pointing to Berlin’s support for the arts and renewable energy.