Italian soccer has witnessed high-profile racist incidents in recent times and their latest campaign has not been well received.
Serie A bosses have been criticized for their latest anti-racism campaign. After being at the centre of a series of shocking racist incidents this season.
The clash between Inter Milan and Roma that saw the clash between Romelu Lukaku and Chris Smalling face-off, was dubbed ‘Black Friday ‘ by Italian paper, Corriere dello Sport.
Many attempts to combat the rising cases of racism incidents have seen Serie A introduce many initiatives and now in particular, they have introduced a set of distasteful artwork.
The creation by Artist Simone Fugazzotto is a presentation featuring three monkeys in motifs as its centerpiece.
The artist used chimps and apes throughout his paintings and in his latest work which has drawn criticism and appears to be even fueling racism more.
“With this three paintings, I tried to show that we are all complex and fascinating creatures, who can be sad or happy, Catholic, Muslim or Buddhist” Fugazzotto explained.
He also added that what decides who or what we are is not our colour so he painted monkeys as a metaphor for human beings. He further explained that all human beings were monkeys originally so he painted a Western monkey, an Asian monkey and a black monkey.
The piece has unsurprisingly been criticized with the campaign appearing to highlight the issues in Italian football.
Some social media users said that pieces are absolute and awful execution of an important message.
Another user wondered why executives, designers and marketers allowed the distasteful piece to go through.
