Fnnch’s Ukraine ‘Fundraiser’ Is All Sorts of Fucked Up
The controversial SF street artist just made thousands of dollars off a global crisis
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I’m not a fan of fnnch’s lackluster, long-in-the-tooth honey bear murals and prints — by any pull or stretch or gymnastic act of the imagination. Admittedly though, that wasn’t always the case.
When the anonymous street artist first began leaving his saccharin mark on San Francisco circa 2017, I fawned over it in various articles. I applauded his then-pertinent philanthropy. I waxed favorably of fnnch’s work that began populating residential windows — pieces of identical artwork that would later grow into symbols of gentrification. I even reserved my criticisms when fnnch smattered SF with pro-mask-wearing PSAs.
Fnnch capitalized on human suffering.
It feels like another lifetime (or two, maybe three) since I had anything remotely kind to say of the straight, cis-white street artist’s work.
It was his blatant, vile, tone-deaf decision to paint the Sister Bear mural atop Powerhouse — a historically queer, kink-positive watering hole that’s existed as a bastion away from oppressive heteronormativity for now over twenty-five years in SoMa — that snapped the last synapse I had connecting his work to any amount of serotonin. Or, frankly, linking anything that could be considered advantageous toward his character.
As if my low-slung opinion of fnnch could dip further, he released a series of pro-Ukraine products — a collection of large-scale paintings and a series of window prints, each item colored with blue and yellow tones — this morning, March 23rd, with funds from those sales going toward Nova Ukraine; the nonprofit is currently raising donations to support frontline volunteers helping provide emergency resources to both refugees and citizens, who have remained in the war zone.
Just in case you need some help doing the math, the…
