Bizarre AK-47 Art Pieces Promote Global Ceasefire

Gunmetal black dominates the world of firearms, but every once in a while you’ll come across polka-dotted rifles, pink pistols, and other oddball color schemes. None of them hold a candle to the elaborately decorated AK-47s from the AKA Peace exhibit.

The art exhibit aimed to promote Peace One Day, a global ceasefire movement. Artists from around the world, including big-name artists like Damien Hirst, Antony Gormley, and Jeremy Deller, have created art pieces out of decommissioned AK-47s. Guns are excellent targets to vilify in the name of peace because, you know, it’s just not practical to paint politicians and make them stand around in an art gallery all day.

Putting aside the fact that these artists are painting guns in a rather negative light, a lot of these pieces are actually rather interesting. This dollar-covered AK-47 by Symondson has bullets filled with what appears to be blood, gold, diamond, coal and a few other valuables.

Artist Sarah Lucas included an art piece of her own, entitled “Power is the Problem.” Evidently, the solution to too much power is to cover it in pantyhose. Or maybe the pantyhose causes too much power? It’s really hard to say.

Maybe the kids with penis-noses can answer that question for us.

Actually, no. That just leaves us with even more questions, including: “What’s the relationship between a dildo-nose and an AK-47?” and “Why is modern art so ridiculous?” Perhaps we’ll never know. “Silence,” by Gormley, certainly isn’t going to speak up.

And “Sign of the Times” by Langlands and Bell isn’t shedding any light on the mystery, either.

This piece by Tim Noble and Sue Webster is similarly tongue-tied.

Maybe some of our more artistically inclined readers can clear this up for us. A handful of the pieces are fairly straight-forward in their message, but the others are just wacky. What do you think some of these more cryptic art pieces are trying to convey?