David Crellin created Decolonize the Surf for his Master of Fine Arts thesis in Digital Arts New Media. The project was created to present research about the history of representation and racism in surf culture and to encourage meaningful conversation in the surfing community around these issues.
A site-specific art and research project, Decolonize The Surf deployed over 400 surf-style stickers throughout surfing locales (surf spots, surf shops, cafes, parking lots, etc) from San Francisco to San Diego. The stickers, embedded with QR codes for scanning, introduce countervailing narratives that challenge typical surf histories and problematize assumptions of white normativity in the sport.
To read more, download the full art and research project Campus + Community Spotlight.