REVENGE OF THE 5TH
“In honor of Intergalactic Star Wars Day, KAIROU Waterman honors a legendary Sith antagonist, syndicate leader, former ruler of Mandalore, and overall living nightmare - Darth Maul. I have always felt a personal attraction to the character of Darth Maul - not merely as a formidable villain, but as a sophisticated and subversive threat. He’s a sympathetic manipulator at best. At his worst - which is arguably his most powerful - he’s death incarnate.
I have always considered Darth Maul as a quintessential example of Friedrich Nietzsche's "Will to Power" - a concept which posits that the fundamental driving force of human existence isn't merely survival, but an inherent striving to grow, overcome, dominate, and assert one's strength and influence upon the world. From this point of view, Maul's life transforms from a simple tale of consuming vengeance into a potent, albeit warped, manifestation of this primal urge.
His brutal upbringing was tragic. Beyond the tragedy, it was also a systematic subjugation designed to break his individual will and reconstruct it as an extension of his master's. He was forged as an instrument, his own potential for self-overcoming initially directed purely into servitude. The goal was to create a vessel out of Maul, to contain a perfect expression of destructive power - albeit one utterly controlled. He’s a figure of terrifying tenacity whose fundamental drive to assert his existence and strength was channeled into a relentless, destructive quest for vengeance. Maul perfectly showcases the immense personal and emotional force of this drive, even when warped by suffering and subjugation.
For this year’s composition, in order to honor the character and his legacy, I envisioned Maul memorialized by a piece of intergalactic propaganda. Something I could imagine plastered along a public walk way, somewhere in Mandalore before the Republic’s ill-fated seige. The text quotes the penultimate line of the Sith creed. The red palate reflects both Maul’s signature face tattoos, and the color of his double-bladed lightsaber, as well as the intensity and ferocity of his persona. I largely drew inspiration from East German Communist and Maoist Chinese graphic influences, as well as artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Shepard Fairey.”
-Mauikanehoalani Lovell
Sith Propaganda: “Revenge of the 5th”, by Mauikanehoalani Lovell
