07.23.09

Tropen Museum print ads

Print Ads, Consumer

New York-based illustrator Chris Buzelli was commissioned by Saatchi & Saatchi Amsterdam to work on a series of posters for the Tropen Museum in Amsterdam when the museum acquired a few new artifacts and wanted the story behind each object illustrated. For the final design of each poster, the actual artifact was superimposed on top of Buzelli’s illustration. The dream job culminated in a five-poster series placed around Amsterdam.

image 1: The people from Southern Ghana believe that when their loved ones die, they move on to another life. They honor their dead with brightly-colored wooden coffins that celebrate an aspect of the dead person’s life—such as a fish if their livelihood was the sea.

image 2: This golden statue from 14th Century Eastern Java depicts an ancient poem (full of ancestral kingdoms, palaces and princesses) about a demon king and a Buddha-prince on a journey toward enlightenment.

image 3: This modern statue of emptiness (made in 2004), is used by Jain people (an ancient religion of India) in their meditations to purify their souls. It helps them to become nothing, to disconnect from the existing world and free their souls from the material world.

Alexandre Lagoet, art director; Rick Coolegem, editor.

chrisbuzelli.comwww.tropenmuseum.nl