Not a Terrorist: Fairey’s 2026 letterpress edition

A compact letterpress release

Not a Terrorist launched through Obey Giant on April 9, 2026 at 10 a.m. PDT, at an issue price of $65. The signed, numbered edition of 450 measures 13 inches high by 10 inches wide. It is a letterpress on cream cotton paper with hand-deckled edges, an OBEY publishing chop at lower left and a Verisart digital certificate. The official archive now marks the edition sold out.

The production details are unusually important here. A title shared in a listing does not establish that the offered object is this small letterpress rather than another reproduction. The cotton support, irregular sheet edges, printed composition and publication marks form a more useful identification group than the title on its own.

The gaze carries the argument

The exact edition image centres two eyes within a patterned blue, black and cream scarf. Floral bands above and below the face enclose the portrait, while a broad cream margin separates the printed field from the sheet’s deckled perimeter. No large textual headline crosses the portrait. The title supplies a verbal proposition outside the central image, leaving the viewer to confront an individual gaze first.

The ornamental cloth is not treated as empty background. Its dense repeats echo the floral framing and pull the portrait into one connected surface. Against that regularity, the eyes become the point of human specificity. The resulting tension is more intimate than a slogan-led poster: the viewer has to remain with a face rather than simply read and move on.

The small scale reinforces that mode of address. At 13 by 10 inches, the sheet invites close looking, where the transitions between the eyes, cloth pattern and paper margin become legible. This is an interpretation of the composition and format, not a claim about tactile qualities measured from a photograph. The official image does not by itself establish the depth of the letterpress impression.

A comparison with This Mirror Weighs a Ton clarifies how specifically these eyes operate. The Interpol screenprint repeats a camera-aperture eye across a 24-by-18-inch sheet on true white Speckletone. Not a Terrorist places a paired human gaze inside cloth on a smaller cotton letterpress sheet. Both demand attention from the viewer, but the mechanical repetition suggests monitoring while the scarf-framed gaze asks for recognition. Process, support and the presence of the deckled margins matter as much as that shared eye motif when identifying the physical editions.

The artist’s stated purpose

In the release statement, Fairey places the work against Islamophobia and anti-Arab rhetoric and argues for equal human rights. That explicit context matters: the image is not simply a decorative study of fabric or an anonymous fashion portrait. Its refusal to equate appearance with threat is the central subject identified by the artist.

For collecting purposes, the documented publishing chop and numbering distinguish the released edition, while the work’s restrained palette and closely framed gaze distinguish its visual approach. The issue price is historical, and the sold-out archive does not establish a secondary-market price. Artist’s-proof and printer’s-proof quantities are not published in the cited specifications.