Charleston, South Carolina, is no stranger to conflict. It was the site of the first battle of the Civil War, and it’s also the hometown of one of the most outspoken human rights advocate artists of our times. The Holy City — named for its prevalence of churches — welcomed back one of its own this past week, as the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston opened an exhibition of Shepard Fairey‘s work, along with four public murals around the city and a series of conversations with the artist. Oh, and parties.

On the way to Normandy Farm the other day, we noticed an enormous mural on the side of College Lodge, heralding the return of native son and street artist Shepard Fairey to the realm of Holy City public art. A little digging yielded a wealth of info: he’s hanging out in town, he’s doing four more murals, and he’s got more range than the “Obey” and “Hope” prints that made him famous belie. Days before his installation at the Halsey opens, Fairey stopped by the Charleston Music Hall for an on-stage chat with Halsey director Mark Sloan.

Often called one of his generation’s most influential street artists, Shepard Fairey is known for his works that often challenge the American dream, capitalism and greed.

Those themes are obvious, if not explicit in Fairey’s new collection of works, “Power & Glory,” which was unveiled Thursday at the Halsey Gallery of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston.

Images of smoking factories, guns and oil spills are seen throughout the collection, painting a single portrait of a consumerist culture gone awry.

If art conveys power through symbolism, then the confluence of this trio—William Halsey, Jasper Johns, Shepard Fairey; three Palmetto State artists from three generations—adds up to more than an anniversary celebration. It’s a symbolic triumph of artistic insistence and integrity and an exploration of what it means to return. To return to an idea or an image, as both Fairey and Johns do in their work, as the show’s title, “The Insistent Image,” suggests. To return to a place and find what is revealed when one revisits and looks again. That’s what anniversaries do—they invite us to return, to reflect, to reconnect, to rediscover.

Shepard Fairey-mania has taken over the Holy City ahead of the Spoleto Festival. The artist has been leaving his mark around Charleston as part of the Halsey Institute’s 30th anniversary. Fairey is a Charleston native whose parents still live and work in the area. He is best known for his “André the Giant Has a Posse” (later “Obey Giant“) street art and the 2008 Barack Obama “Hope” campaign poster.

This week, Shepard Fairey will convert the derelict Sottile Theatre in Charleston, South Carolina, into a theater of his own, filling the space with piles of bricks, broken light fixtures, dilapidated filing cabinets, and other “detritus leftover from the American dream,” as Mark Sloan, director of the College of Charleston’s Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, calls it.

Adorned with propaganda-inspired posters and illuminated by the flickering glow of a 7-foot-long neon sign (also crafted by the artist), the site will resemble a post-apocalyptic military conscription office.

The artist’s new establishment is an extension of his multi-site exhibition at the Halsey Institute, opening Thursday. Titled “The Insistent Image: Recurrent Motifs in the Art of Shepard Fairey and Jasper Johns,” the show will present recent works by Fairey together with a survey of prints by Jasper Johns, who also grew up in South Carolina. Additionally, four murals by the street artist will be on view throughout Charleston.

We’ve already taken a look at Shepard Fairey’s first and second murals that popped up around town last week, but they Obey team was busy over the weekend too, knocking out three more pieces ahead of this week’s Piccolo Spoleto opening of The Insistent Image, featuring works by S.C.-natives Fairey and Jasper Johns at the Halsey Institute.

On May 22, on the other side of the country, “The Insistent Image: Recurrent Motifs in the Art of Shepard Fairey and Jasper Johns” will open at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina, Fairey’s hometown. Though born in Georgia, Jasper Johns, who is perhaps our most celebrated living American artist, spent much of his youth in South Carolina, where he developed a longtime friendship with William Halsey, for whom the institute was named. Each artist will occupy separate gallery spaces, as much care has been taken to ensure that direct comparisons are not made or at least influenced by the hand of the show’s curators. That being said, the work in Fairey’s exhibit, a multimedia collection of sculptures, paintings, screen prints, and more, collectively titled “Power & Glory,” analyzes everything that’s good and bad within the American way of life, with emphasis on our perverse fascination with power and the means through which we attain it. Johns will feature a series of 16 prints dating back to 1982 and executed with the help of master printmaker Bill Goldston.