Thanks to the invention of the camera, the art of photography has beautifully captured some of the fascinatingly colourful and sometimes noteworthy characteristics of our world leaders.
None however capture them as brightly as these photos by artist Saint Hoax. The self described “POPlitical artist” who focuses much of his work on “rewriting history through visual lies” has created a photo series titled, War Drags You Out, controversially transforming the worlds leaders, past and present into drag queens.
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Vladdy Pushin
The inspiration to turn Saddam Hussein into “Madame O’ Sane” came shortly after the artist attended his very first drag performance. Hoax realized the recipe to create a great drag queen is a fierce persona, defining outfits, and “one hell of a PR team” – was eerily similar to the ingredients used in the making of a powerful political figure.
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Georgia Buchette
“A rush of images containing Hitler’s moustache, Bin Laden’s headgear, Obama’s campaigns, Saddam’s [narcissism] crossed through my mind. It got me thinking that behind every ‘great’ man, there’s a queen. Just like drag queens, political leaders are expected to entertain, perform and occasionally lip-sync a public speech. But unlike drag queens, the fame hungry leaders don’t know when to take their costumes off.”
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Ossie B
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Baricka-O-Bisha
The most controversial image of the series is one depicting Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah as “Queen Abby”. As you can imagine of course, not everyone could see the humour in Hoax’s works. “Shame to you who post the picture, just want to say those who are trying to disgrace by posting this kind of unacceptable picture about King Abdullah, you should know that King Abdullah is a model leader to the Arab world,” wrote one user after the image was posted to Facebook.
