Defining the Art of Change in the Age of Trump by Deanna Luu

SEPTEMBER 30â&#x20AC;&#x201C;NOVEMBER 25, 2018

THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL ART

SEPTEMBER 30â&#x20AC;&#x201C;NOVEMBER 25, 2018 Mather Studios 916 G Street NW Washington, DC 20001 Gallery Hours Monday & Tuesday, By Appointment Wednesday - Sunday, noon to 6pm

CREDITS

Copyright © 2018 Center for Contemporary Political Art. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States by International Arts & Artists. International Arts & Artists is a nonprofit arts service organization dedicated to promoting cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts internationally.

The Center for Contemporary Political Art (CCPArt) is located in Mather Studios 916 G Street NW Washington, DC 20001 Gallery Hours Monday & Tuesday, By Appointment Wednesday - Sunday, noon to 6pm

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Designer Deanna Luu, IA&A Design Studio Copy Editor David Walker ISBN: 9780997309904 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018963505

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B OA R D IMAGE CREDITS cover: Martin Steven Linder, Liberty Execution, 2018, Manila rope, United States of American flag, 48" × 10" × 4.75" back cover: Opening reception of Defining the Art of Change exhibition. Image courtesy of Hilary Schwab. page 4-5: Michèle Colburn, Lawyers, Guns, and Money (State of the Union), 2018 page 30: detail of Juliette McCullough, 'Abduction 1' (The Abduction of Truth and Justice by Greed and the Usurping of Power), 2017, Oil on canvas, 46" × 50"

CHARLES KRAUSE, Chairman ROBIN STRONGIN, Vice Chair MICHAEL HODGSON, MD Treasurer ANDREW BRANDEL, PhD JUDY GREENBERG PHYLLIS GREENBERGER MELVIN HARDY KATHLEEN RAMICH K. CHRIS TODD, JD

CCPArt is indebted to The Schaina and Josephina Lurje Memorial Foundation and especially to Gertrude Stein for her financial support and encouragement.

CONTENTS 7

E X H I B I T I O N O V E RV I E W

A B O U T C C PA r t

10 INTRODUCTION by Charles Krause 2 0 T H E P O W E R O F A RT by Robin Strongin

2 2 T O P P L I N G P O W E R : T H E P R U S S I A N A R C H A N G E L A N D S T R AT E G I E S O F S U B V E R S I O N AT T H E F I R S T I N T E R N AT I O N A L D A D A FA I R by Dorothea Dietrich

3 1 D E F I N I N G T H E A RT O F C H A N G E IN THE AGE OF TRUMP by Judy A. Greenberg

33 JURORS 34

E X H I B I T I N G A RT I S T S

Debra Pearlman Babies Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Vote Digital print on rag paper

"I had to stop making pretty pictures for a while this past year when the political ethics and morality of my childhood seem to be eroding in the society I live in today. Artists have a responsibility to our culture to reflect and question it. Especially now. This body of work is a rough response. The subject is rough. The solution is abstract." Sarah Dillon, Exhibiting Artist 6

E X H I B I T I O N O V E RV I E W

Defining the Art of Change in the Age of Trump, the first opencall exhibition presented by Washington’s new Center for Contemporary Political Art (CCPArt), invited artists from all fifty states and Puerto Rico to submit original work, challenging the artists to respond with art as powerful as the times are dangerous, to help Americans understand what’s at stake—and why it’s their duty to vote—in the November 2018 midterm elections. With more than 500 submissions by almost 300 artists, CCPArt hopes that the Defining exhibition will lead to a redefinition of the role artists play in our society; identify the country’s leading practitioners of political art; and demonstrate why political art should be recognized as a valued genre of American art in the twenty-first century. As the nation’s first research institute and exhibition space devoted exclusively to the study and strategic use of the Art of Civic Engagement, the Center will provide a means for the nation’s artists to create and exhibit art that will enrage, engage, and better inform We The People about the most important and contentious issues facing the country today. Charles Krause, Founder Robin Strongin, Co Founder

A B O U T C C PA r t

The Center for Contemporary Political Art (CCPArt), a 501(c)(3) public corporation, is at once a groundbreaking research institute and the first exhibition space in the United States devoted exclusively to the study and strategic use of political fine art, continuing a tradition that dates at least as far back as ancient Greece. Indeed, many of the greatest paintings and sculptures in the canon of Western art—from the carved portraits of Alexander the Great attributed to Lysippos (ca. 323-31) to Titian’s Las Furias (1548/49) to Picasso’s Guernica (1937) to Boris Lurie’s Adieu Amerique: Lumumba is Dead (1961)—were created to convey political messages in the aftermath of war or to warn of impending crises. Mindful of that history and tradition, the newly formed Center for Contemporary Political Art, located in Washington, DC, will exhibit fine art “in support of good governance and a just society for the Common Good of all Americans.” Hoping to encourage more of the estimated 2 million artists resident in the United States to dedicate at least part of their practices to political art, the vast majority of the Center’s (first) exhibitions will be, like this one, juried “open call” exhibitions, open to all artists who wish to submit their work for consideration. Believed to be the first arts organization in the country with a mandate to “actively engage” in the national debate over contentious issues, such as health care, immigration policy, tax policy, presidential leadership, corruption, and foreign meddling in US elections, the Center will develop a sophisticated social media presence; host programs; organize artist talks and conferences at the Center; and allow likeminded advocacy groups to use images of the artwork exhibited at the Center for their own outreach campaigns, free of charge.

The Center's founders believe that facilitating the active engagement of artists and their work will help restore a oncevital part of the democratic process in the United States—the give-and-take of public debate—that has largely been lost, due to the corrosive effects of Big Money and the sort of backroom politics that are the unintended consequence of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Peter Barnitz The Wall: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, 2017 Gold leaf, mixed media, acrylic, wood 9" × 54"

Beyond demonstrating the power of fine art to inspire and influence needed social and political change, the Center hopes to serve as a model for other public institutions that wish to encourage the political consciousness and cohesion of America’s creative class. For the longer term, the Center hopes the impact of its exhibitions will help establish political and socially-engaged art as the defining art of the twenty-first century.

INTRODUCTION by Charles Krause, Founder Center for Contemporary Political Art

Defining the Art of Change in the Age of Trump, the Center for Contemporary Political Art’s inaugural exhibition, opened to the public on Sunday, September 30, 2018: five weeks and two days before the bitterly contested November 2018 midterm elections, when the American people would choose between 940 Democratic and Republican Party candidates running for 35 open seats in the US Senate and all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives—and thus determine the political makeup of the 116th Congress of the United States. Donald Trump’s name was not on the ballot in any of these elections. Yet their outcome will likely decide the political fate of the billionaire bully and improbable 45th US president, whose tumultuous first two years in office have further polarized the nation; inserted white supremacy into the toxic stew of US race relations; marked the end of the American Century of global dominance; and, many fear, weakened the constitutional safeguards that have, until now, protected our system of representative democracy from the tyranny of one-man rule. The Center for Contemporary Political Art (CCPArt) is a citizens' initiative founded during the first months of Trump’s presidency by a group of mostly Washington residents deeply concerned about the new administration’s policies and nativist political ideology—not least, the president’s own apparent disregard for rule of law and the Constitution, as he tries to shield himself from a special counsel investigation into his campaign’s underhanded involvement in Russia’s secret efforts to elect him and undermine our faith in democracy. fig. 1 Dorothy Fall Enveloping the World, 2016 Ink on paper 24" × 31"

Located just seven blocks from the White House, CCPArt’s new exhibition space is the physical manifestation of our belief that art and visual images can inspire positive social and political change. America’s artists, we believe, are a largely untapped resource fully capable of helping Americans see through the fog of demagoguery and lies that Trump has deliberately used to further divide the country. Defining the Art of Change in the Age of Trump presents political art of a very high caliber—selected by a distinguished jury of experts from almost 500 artworks submitted by 296 artists from across the United States.

fig. 2 detail of Anatol Zukerman Mr. Trumputin 2017 Acrylic on canvas 16" × 20"

fig. 3 detail of Michael D'Antuono Comrades!, 2018 Oil on canvas 48" × 48"

The roughly 100 paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, assemblages, and pieces of jewelry in the Defining exhibition, memorialized in this catalogue, demonstrate the concern, values, talent, and political literacy of the artists who created it, as well as—we believe—the vast majority of artists in America. Political art, unlike other genres or schools of art, is not so much about style or technique. It is much more about impact and substance; which means that new criteria are needed to judge its importance. One rule the Defining judges adhered to (with few exceptions) was that, to be successful, a work of political art should be able to communicate its message before the viewer sees its title. While most of the works selected for the Defining exhibition are representational, we invited artists to submit abstract work as well, because we believe that it too can communicate political messages, or—more precisely—the emotions political issues can evoke or intensify. Dorothy Fall’s monoprint Enveloping the World (fig. 1) and Michèle Colburn’s mixed-media painting Lawyers, Guns, and Money are but two examples of abstract works we think succeed as works of political art. They address critical issues—respectively, climate change and gun violence in America—that have been largely absent from the histrionics of the current election cycle. Instead, Trump has used his bully pulpit and campaign rallies to conjure up phantom threats or to lend credence to wild and dark conspiracy theories, often laced with racist and anti-Semitic undertones. What’s abundantly clear is that the president, together with his cabal of billionaire supporters and the shadowy political operatives they employ, is banking on hatred and fear to turn out enough of his Republican base to save his presidency on Election Day. As I write these words, two weeks before the midterm elections, the president is campaigning furiously in Texas, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Illinois. Hoping to head off impeachment and the titanic power struggle that will likely ensue if the Democrats take back even one of the two houses of Congress, Trump is now is in the final stretch of the dirtiest, ugliest and most expensive midterm campaign in history. 13

fig. 4 Kelly Witte Not Up For Grabs 2017 Linoleum relief print and silkscreen print

Nothing seems to be out of bounds. One minute he’s threatening to unilaterally revoke an amendment to the Constitution, the next he’s accusing “globalists” of planning to replace white males in the United States with African, Latino, and Middle Eastern immigrants as part of a plot to end white supremacy. This week, he’s threatening to close our 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Why? To prevent a column of 7,000 asylum seekers—impoverished men, women and children from Central America, all fleeing gang violence in Honduras and Guatemala—from “invading” the United States. When it becomes clear that most of the refugees are unarmed women and children, he claims they’ve been infiltrated by terrorists from the Middle East. The media quickly loses interest in the refugees, once it’s established that they are indeed what—and who—they say they are. But Trump doesn’t care. He’s set up a straw man that’s credible to his base; they will be gratified by his promise to save them from it. And they will repay him by voting in the midterms for Republicans. Facts don’t matter to Trump, nor to his base. He’s convinced them that whatever the media reports, if it contradicts what he says, is “fake news.” Delegitimizing the media is perhaps the single most significant step Trump has taken to defend himself against evidence that his campaign did, in fact, conspire with Russia’s intelligence services to “win” the 2016 election. It also shows the hand of Russia’s intelligence services, suggesting they were more deeply involved in Trump’s campaign than has been revealed so far. Just as Trump was laying the groundwork for the refugees to become a “dangerous threat” to his supporters this week, a real threat presented itself that was legitimately dangerous. Real terrorists, probably the homegrown variety that Trump has refused to disavow, delivered a package with a pipe bomb in it to George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, at his home in Bedford, New York.

fig. 5 David Estlund ONE, 2014 Inkjet printed digital photograph 18" × 24"

fig. 6 Jim Boden Sower of Discord 2018 Mixed media 9" × 12"

fig. 7 detail of Jack Swersie Constitutional Crisis!, 2017 Photographs 28" × 20"

As the week progressed, the FBI reported that similar packages had been mailed to the homes of Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, former CIA Director John Brennan, and to CNN’s offices in New York. They were intercepted the same day the White House announced the president would meet with his patron, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Paris, just days after the midterms. Ostensibly, the meeting was arranged so the two leaders could discuss the new nuclear arms race Trump started earlier in the week when his national security advisor informed the Russians that the Trump Administration had decided to withdraw from the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) signed by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. What else Trump and Putin might talk about was the subject of much rumor and speculation, all of it unsettling in light of the unfinished Mueller investigation into the ongoing Russian cyber-warfare disinformation campaign that helped elect Trump in 2016 and whose objectives—according to US intelligence—are to further divide and polarize Americans and undermine confidence in the outcome of the midterm elections. The fear these developments are causing—fear of the Other, which the president uses to excite his mostly white supporters, and fear of retribution, which has made a growing number of Americans who don’t like, or support, Trump think twice about speaking out against him—was anticipated by several works in the Defining exhibition, notably those by David Estlund, Jim Boden, Jack Swersie, and Martin Linder, among others. Estlund’s One (fig. 5, inkjet printed digital photograph, 24” × 18”), created in 2014, anticipates the undefined fear many Americans seem to sense or feel today. A serious discussion is taking place about something that’s troubling the four people in the picture. But they don’t yet seem aware of the fire burning nearby. Jim Boden’s Sower of Discord (fig. 6, mixed media, 9” × 12”) suggests how a regime intent on silencing its critics might go about it. If Trump doesn’t already know how, Putin can 17

tell him, because his enforcers are very good at it. The Russians learned years ago that it’s no longer necessary to jail or kill millions of dissidents; with television, and now cellphones and the internet, one strategically timed and chosen assassination is enough to get the message across to everyone who needs to hear it. Jack Swersie’s Constitutional Crisis (fig. 7, photographs of scenes using props, 28” × 20”) suggests that, in a country with a long history of freedom and rule of law, instilling fear might cause a backlash. But not, hints Martin Linder’s Liberty Executed (assemblage, 48” x 10” × 4.75”), one that can’t be managed. While it seems to me, and to the artists, that the “fear” of illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America at its current levels might more accurately be classified as prejudice, the fear that Trump might seek to punish or silence his critics is neither irrational nor impossible. To preserve and protect the freedom we’ve got, we’re going to have to find new ways to reach out to the 40 percent we don’t agree with—and persuade them that the First Amendment is something they should fight for, too. It wasn’t a coincidence that we opened the new Center for Contemporary Political Art five weeks before the midterms. From our very first meeting, in the early summer of 2017, CCPArt’s founders thought it important to open its first exhibition in time to give the nation’s artists the opportunity to express their views about the president—and the issues and controversies that would decide this historic election. We believe that art can increase public awareness and influence public attitudes and opinion. And, if timed right, we believe it can have real impact. So our mission is to present art that addresses the most important and contentious issues of our time in real time, in order to bridge the gaps that currently divide us—and to then offer ideas and support reforms that will help restore trust in our government and political institutions before it’s too late. That’s what contemporary means. And that’s what we intend to do, if we can find the resources to continue. 18

For our first show, we called for art that would help the electorate understand what’s at stake and why it’s every citizen’s duty to vote in the midterm elections. It was a request that could have been sent out by the League of Women Voters. But we knew, going in, that the response we’d get would send the League, and every museum and gallery in the country, up a tree…or running for cover. Political art, or what we call the Art of Civic Engagement, has been out of vogue in the United States at least since the Cold War began 70 years ago. Like the organizers of the First International Dada Fair in 1920, which Dorothea Dietrich writes about in a fine essay elsewhere in this catalogue, we believe artists often have important insights to communicate in their work, especially in times of crisis. But for society to benefit, there must be a place, even in the internet age, to show it. The Center for Contemporary Political Art wants to be that place, and we think our Defining exhibition demonstrates that America’s artists are both willing and able to create important Art for Our Sake—for humanity’s sake—as well as Art for Art’s Sake. As we look to the future of a century that began with 9/11 and seems destined to be filled with natural catastrophes, environmental challenges, shortages of food and water, and unimaginable human suffering, we think that the kind of art found in this catalogue—art that has a social purpose, warning us of the dangers we face or advocating on behalf of social and political policies that benefit all of us—will be the important art of the future. That’s what we mean by Art for Our Sake and what we intend The Art of Civic Engagement to be. And who knows? This catalogue may one day prove that we defined The Art of the 21st Century right here.

T H E P O W E R O F A RT by Robin Strongin, Co Founder Center for Contemporary Political Art

I used to sit in my Sunday School class learning about the Holocaust, and wondered why people didn’t leave; why parents didn’t just pick up their kids and run away. It seemed so obvious to me when I was young. Now I know. I also know that throughout history, artists have been warning, documenting, and empowering. In his book Blueprint for Revolution, Srdja Popovic writes about the critical contribution art and design provide: “We called our movement Otpor!, which means ‘resistance,’ and we gave it a logo, a cool-looking black fist that was a riff on a potent symbol of social change that has served everyone from the partisans who fought against the Nazis in occupied Yugoslavia during WWII to the Black Panthers in the 1960s....All this talk of logos may sound shallow, but....We wanted Serbs to have a visual image they could associate with our movement.” In January 2016, world-renowned artist Olafur Eliasson (along with Yao Chen, Leonardo DiCaprio and will.i.am) received a Crystal Award at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The Crystal Awards recognize artists who inspire cross-cultural understanding and trust across nations, “embracing those exceptional artists who deal with major global issues, including the environment, social inclusion, health, education, food security and peace-making.” In accepting his award, Eliasson had this to say about the power of art: “Art offers one of the few places in our society where people from various backgrounds can come together

detail of Chawky Frenn We the People # 31 2018 Mixed media on poster 29" × 23"

to share an experience while having different opinions. Disagreement is not only accepted but encouraged. Art helps us identify with one another and expands our notion of we—from the local to the global.” Sometimes data and talking points are not enough. So yes, I don’t just think art can inspire civic action, I know it does. And it must. That sense of foreboding I felt in Sunday School all those years ago came roaring back the evening of November 8, 2016. As I watch in horror what is happening in our country today, I am torn between the strong desire to run somewhere safe, and to stay and work to turn things around. How? By working with Charles Krause and our board to empower artists to create the art of social and political change. Our inaugural exhibition, Defining the Art of Change in the Age of Trump, seeks to reinvigorate civic dialogue and civic engagement around the troubling issues of the day. As we open the Center for Contemporary Political Art, I invite you to view the art and see how it moves you. 21

TOPPLING POWER: The Prussian Archangel and Strategies of Subversion at the First International Dada Fair by Dorothea Dietrich

Already in December 2015, the dangers of a looming Trump era conjured visions of a failed Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, and Germany’s descent into fascism.1 Since then, the comparison has become common, and anxiety about failing institutions and the rise of authoritarianism has intensified. The Weimar Republic, founded in 1918 at the end of World War I and the defeat of the German Empire, was contested by both the radical left and the conservative and ultra-conservative right for its entire political life, from the moment of its founding to its demise in 1933. And, much like the artists participating today in Defining the Art of Change in the Age of Trump, artists in the Weimar Republic harnessed their talents and vision to express their political will and influence public opinion, trusting that their visual tools, patriotism, and passion could contribute in meaningful ways to the political debate—and (hopefully) to a more just society.

Opening of First International Dada Fair, Berlin, June 1920

Visitors to the 1920 First International Dada Fair2—an exhibition of well over 180 works, packed floor-to-ceiling into the two modest-sized rooms of the Gallery Burchard in Berlin—were greeted by a life-size figure: a mannequin dressed in gray military garb and suspended horizontally from the ceiling. The figure was merely a stuffed uniform, its face a pig’s snout fashioned from papier mâché, its black-booted legs crossed and dangling awkwardly above the visitors’ heads. Called The Prussian Archangel (1920), it was collaboratively assembled by John Heartfield and Rudolf Schlichter. The two artists had also outfitted the figure with a prominent paper sash inscribed in large letters with the first words of a well-known German Christmas carol, “High from the Heavens I come,” and a placard hanging from its waist which proclaimed: “To understand this work of art completely, one should drill daily for twelve hours with a loaded backpack in full marching gear in the Tempelhof Field.3 Heartfield-Schlichter, mont.” Other works in the exhibition amplified the shock of the encounter with The Prussian Archangel. Another sculptural assemblage with a military theme, John Heartfield’s and George Grosz’s The Mad German Philistine John Heartfield (1920), stood nearby. It was boy-sized, a small mannequin

dressed in a black body-stocking suggestive of the black trousers of an officer’s battle uniform, and decorated with the Star of the Order of the Black Eagle—the highest Prussian order of chivalry—with a metal rod as a peg leg, its arms replaced by a doorbell and a revolver, its crotch augmented with a dental-plaster impression of a mouth and teeth; the whole construction mounted stiffly on a stool and tethered to the ground, and sporting a light bulb for a head.4 To the left on the wall hung Otto Dix’s large framed painting War Cripples (1920)5, which depicted a nightmarish parade of four severely mutilated veterans with amputated arms, legs, or both, one veteran reduced to a torso being pushed on a cart by a man with a prosthetic arm, the other two limping along close to the ground on pegs, fitted with rudimentary prostheses, and all with horribly maimed and crudely reconstructed faces.6 Grosz’s acerbic print portfolio Gott mit uns (“God with Us,” 1919; published by Wieland Herzfelde’s Malik Verlag in 1920), in which the artist takes sardonic aim in nine lithographs at the brutality and narrow-mindedness of the military during the war, was displayed together with other printed material on a table in the gallery. When first seeing Grosz’s portfolio, the leftist critic and writer Kurt Tucholsky declared: “If drawings could kill, the Prussian military certainly would be dead.”7 Overall, the walls of the gallery were covered with collages made from fragments of mass culture: illustrations cut from magazines, further ripped apart and reconfigured into new images; at times combined with traditional artistic means, such as watercolor, drawing, or painting. The Fair also included various wall reliefs, sculptures, dolls, pillows, and a large number of posters bearing slogans pinned directly to the wall, while also exhibiting some amateur work—all in contradistinction to the norms of gallery exhibitions of fine art. The Berlin Dada artists have entered the annals of art history as the “political Dada,” according them a unique status among the many Dada groups that arose in various cities around the world between 1916 and 1923, when the movement largely came to an end. The Berlin group’s reputation is based to some degree on the politically outspoken works mentioned above, as they gained some public and political notoriety at the time of the exhibition—including a public

trial the following year—and again in 1937, in a reverberation of the Dada Fair, when the Nazis in the Degenerate Art Exhibition configured a wall to ridicule the Berlin Dada Fair in order to incite public loathing of both modernist experimentation and the Weimar Republic.8 Indeed, most of the Berlin Dadaists had strong political views, and several were members of the newly founded German Communist Party (KPD); whereas others considered themselves less politically than artistically engaged. John Heartfield and George Grosz, for their part, had both received their KPD membership cards from Rosa Luxemburg herself on December 31, 1918,9 the day the Party was founded, and, like many others, had devoted themselves to aspirations of a communist revolution in the first months or years following the end of WWI and the founding of the Republic. They saw the newly-elected, ruling Social Democrats as too beholden to the old power elites, especially the church and the military, and despised the new government for collaborating with the police and the military to suppress and eradicate communist and other radical leftist organizations.10 Heartfield and Grosz, who were particularly outspoken in these convictions, were two of the main organizers of the Berlin Dada Exhibition. The message of The Prussian Archangel was clear and vividly understood—by visitor and government alike. The Archangel invoked the religious realm by its very title and its placement, as if it were indeed a celestial messenger (it was listed in the exhibition flyer as a “ceiling sculpture”) bringing the good news of Christmas; however, the artists, by giving it military dress, and by adding their admonishment that strict military training and combat readiness were preconditions for fully grasping its meaning, had turned the “angel” into a messenger of death by warfare—one whose pig snout alluded malodorously to the alliance between the church and the military. In spite of the artworks’ aggressive unmasking of power relations, Kurt Tucholsky reported that visitors did not seem terribly shocked by the works. However, Die Rote Fahne (“The Red Flag”), the KPD daily, warned workers against Dada attacks on their cultural heritage, claiming that such people had no business to call themselves Communists.11

A Captain Matthäi, on the other hand, believed that the whole exhibit was meant to be a systematic baiting of the officers and men of the Reichswehr (army).12 While the blasé response of some visitors may have been conditioned by the civilians’ daily encounters with actual maimed WWI veterans—which inevitably took some of the visceral sting out of these provocative works—the critics’ response suggests how ideologically fraught the status and function of art had become in radical political circles. However, the most noteworthy reaction to the exhibition was from the government itself. Apparently agitated no less by Tucholsky’s description of the artworks than by the works themselves, the police, at the behest of the Reichswehr ministry, conducted raids on subsequent days on both the gallery and on the offices of the leftist Malik Publishing House, which had printed many of the exhibition’s materials. They confiscated a copy of Grosz’s Gott mit Uns portfolio in the gallery, as well as additional copies and the plates for the edition at the publishing house; and returned the following day on the order of the attorney general of the second district court of Berlin to collect all remaining copies. They also took seven original drawings without legal authorization.13 Several months later, the public prosecutor initiated criminal proceedings against Grosz, Heartfield, Schlichter, another artist (Johannes Baader), the gallery owner (Dr. Otto Burchard), and the Malik House publisher (Wieland Herzfelde) for defamation of the military.14 In the end, after a public trial on April 20, 1921, only two were penalized: George Grosz and Wieland Herzfelde, who were made to pay a fine. Tucholsky, meanwhile, was dismayed that the art experts called in to testify for the accused had tried to exculpate them by claiming that their provocative works were done only in jest—rather than use the public platform of the trial to defend the defendants’ political views. Grosz and Herzfelde were fined 300 and 600 Reichsmark respectively, and were forced to destroy the portfolios and the plates for the edition.15 Whatever its outcome, the mere fact that the trial took place at all had established beyond any doubt that some of the works in the First International Dada Fair had indeed

reached at least part of their intended audience—and were fully understood as political, in their fierce expressions of social conscience and critique of government. But there was another political agenda at work in the exhibition, one that— rather than tear the masks from political power games by way of shocking subject matter—contrived instead to insert itself aggressively and strategically within existing norms and the larger discussion about the tradition and function of art. If power has traditionally made three primary demands on art—namely, to demonstrate the glory and triumph of power itself; to organize public drama (ceremonies, monuments); and to produce educational or propagandistic material to support the ruling system16—the First International Dada Fair, with its shocking and irreverent display of radically new art, turned all of that on its head. We have seen already how Heartfield and Schlichter assembled The Prussian Archangel from found materials, thus purposefully creating a discontinuous and disjunctive work of art that destroyed the common expectation about authenticity. Furthermore, if we consider The Prussian Archangel and The Mad Philistine as sculptures within a broader historical perspective, then we have to recall the concurrent obsession— at times described as “statuemania”—with monumental public statuary, particularly large-scale public monuments of important military or political figures, which peaked during the empire-rich era of 1870-1940.17 Mutilated military figures hanging from the ceiling with dangling legs, or else mounted on a stool, radically undermined this public adulation of authority, militarism, and power, and served to question their value in post-WWI life. Much as the Berlin Dadaists subverted the tradition of sculpture and monuments, the name of the exhibition itself (the Dada “Fair”) was a riposte to the traditional status of the work of art as a precious cultural good in the art market— implying that the artists saw themselves as producers of mere commodities, in common with their self-identification as “monteurs” (mechanics) rather than refined artists: a sentiment underscored by one of the slogans in the exhibition, “Art is dead. Long live Tatlin’s machine art.” The cramped quarters in the Gallery Burchard, and the purposefully

crowded display of the Dada exhibition, countered the long-standing official desire for the creation of large public spaces in which to celebrate and deepen patriotism. Here— far from an insouciant celebration of a new democratic government—were close-up, chaotic, in-your-face encounters with postwar misery and the humiliating collapse of empire. The many posters in the exhibition paid mocking tribute to the longtime educational or propagandistic traditions of art by subverting them into rancorous slogans for the destruction of art, aesthetics, and the bourgeoisie; or else into clarion calls for a political/artistic regeneration: “Dada is political,” “Dilettantes, rise up against art!,” “Dada stands on the side of the revolutionary Proletariat!” Therefore, the political in the Dada Fair, despite what The Prussian Archangel may have suggested, was more than just a topical “short sharp shock”—a sanguinary vivisection of postwar power relations. Rather, it was a dark, intravenous infusion of work that, above all, inserted itself critically and strategically into the space of art in order to fundamentally subvert it. While the Archangel, with its unvarnished assault on power and corruption, may have been its most shocking component, the lasting political legacy of this intervention ultimately manifested itself on an altogether deeper level—within the timeless, revelatory sphere of our cyclical reimagining of what society and the market bring to art itself, and how we counter it with drastic reversals.

NOTES: 1 R oger Cohen, “Trump’s Weimar America,” The New York Times, 14 December 2015: “Welcome to Weimar America: It’s getting restive in the beer halls. People are sick of politics as usual...It would be foolish and dangerous not to take [Trump] seriously. His bombast is attuned to Weimar America. The United States is not paying reparations, as Weimar Germany was after World War I. Hyperinflation does not loom. But the Europeanization of American politics is unmistakable.” One reader’s comment: “What part of the country exactly is Mr. Cohen visiting? Here, Americans are getting ready for Christmas, celebrating Hanukkah in the Jewish communities, enjoying the rev-up to the winter sports season, and watching their children get excited by the end-of-the-year festivities and upcoming school holidays.” 2 D ie Grosse Monstre-Dada-Schau (The Great Monster-Dada Show), alternatively called Die Erste Internationale Dada-Messe (First International Dada Fair) was on display in the summer of 1920. 3 T he Tempelhof Field was a military exercise ground in Berlin before being turned into an airport in 1923 and then into a public park in 2008. 4 F or a detailed discussion of this work, see Brigid Doherty, “The Work of Art and the Problem of Politics in Berlin Dada,” October, 105 (Summer 2003), 73-92. 5 O tto Dix, Kriegskrüppel (War Cripples), 1920. This painting was donated to the Stadtmuseum Dresden, and confiscated by the Nazis in 1937 as degenerate. It was included in the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition organized by the Nazi government in 1937 in Munich, which then traveled to many cities over the next year; the Nazis later destroyed the painting. 6 S urgeons in various countries developed pioneering techniques in reconstructive surgery during World War I to treat seriously injured soldiers. Particularly common were life-threatening gunshot wounds in which soldiers had lost significant parts of their faces. With new surgical techniques, such as skin grafting, it became possible for the first time to save many of the severely wounded. See Julie Anderson, “Mutilation and Disfiguration,” in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2017-08-03. https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/mutilation_and_disfiguration. 7 “ Gott mit uns” was the Prussian State motto. For the portfolio and Tucholsky, see George Grosz, God with Us (Gott mit uns), Museum of Modern Art, New York, Collection online: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/67039. 8 “ Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany, exh. cat., Stephanie Barron, ed., with contributions by Peter Guenther, et al, New York, Abrams, 1991, 54-55, fig. 43. 9 R osa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were the founders of the German Communist Party. Because of their involvement in the abortive Spartacus Revolt—a communist uprising mostly confined to Berlin just before the general election in January 1919, and which was put down on the president’s order by the army and members of the Freikorps (conservative paramilitary bands that consisted mostly of decommissioned veterans and which operated throughout the country)—she and Liebknecht were arrested and murdered by members of the Freikorps in Berlin on January 15, 1919. Although the Treaty of Versailles limited the army to a rudimentary force of 100,000 soldiers, the army had secretly begun to train returning veterans who then joined the Freikorps. 10 F or an excellent, concise history of the Weimar Republic with many links, see: https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/ Germany-from-1918-to-1945#ref58200. 11 J ohn Willett, Art and Politics in the Weimar Period: The New Sobriety, 1917-1933, New York, Pantheon Books, 1978, 53. 12 C aptain Matthäi testified at the subsequent trial for the prosecution. Beth Irwin Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991, 216. 13 Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic, 216. 14 Willett, 53. 15 H anne Bergius, Das Lachen Dadas. Die Berliner Dadaisten und ihre Aktionen. Giessen, Anabas Verlag, 1989, 365. For a comprehensive account of the trial, see Rosamunde Neugebauer, George Grosz—Macht und Ohnmacht satirischer Kunst: Die Grafikfolgen “Gott mit uns,” “Ecce Homo” und “Hintergrund,” Berlin, Gebrüder Mann, 1993, 51-98; Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic, 216-8; Michael White, “The Grosz Case: Paranoia, Self-hatred and Anti-Semitism,” Oxford Art Journal, 30/3 (2007), 433-453. See “Critics and Trials,” Lewis, ch. 7, 211-231, 263-9, for a detailed discussion of Grosz’s persecution and criminal prosecution for his political works throughout the years of the Weimar Republic. About the legal basis for prosecution, see Lewis: “Though the Weimar Constitution guaranteed freedom of expression, public prosecutors made use of Paragraph 184-184a of the German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch) which dated from May, 1871, and forbade the publication of obscene or indecent writings or illustrations. Tucholsky claimed that the Berlin public prosecutor Ortmann, who was the prosecutor in the ‘Gott mit uns’ trial, could not confiscate enough to satisfy himself. In November, 1920, publishers and booksellers in Berlin were up in arms over the most recent round of confiscations which, Tucholsky said, included among others, two books by Paul Verlaine, an edition of Schiller with lithographs by Lovis Corinth, a book by Huysmans with lithographs by Willy Geiger, and a collection of Heinrich Zille lithographs.” Lewis, 218. 16 E ric Hobsbawm, “Foreword,” Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930-45, Dawn Ades, et al, eds., London, Thames and Hudson in association with Hayward Gallery, 1995, 12-13. 17 Hobsbawm, Art and Power, 13.

DEFINING THE ART OF CHANGE IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

Is this new age America? Where is democracy? Where are the voices of sanity? What happened to saving the environment? What happened to womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rights? What happened to children separated from parents? What happened to controlling rampant gun shootings? What happened to healthcare? What happened to our allies? What happened to free press? What happened to human rights? What happened to truth? What happened to The United States of America!!! Art has recorded history throughout time. Art will record this bleak and distressing time in our history. Art will be the voice of the people for justice, truth and the ideals of The United States of America! Judy A. Greenberg Board of Directors Center for Contemporary Political Art Director Emerita The Kreeger Museum

JURORS

CHARLES KRAUSE, Founder and Chair, the Center for Contemporary Political Art. A former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, CBS News and the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, his reporting was recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with an Emmy Award for his reporting from Israel and the Middle East (1997); the Latin American Studies Association Media Award for his Central America coverage (1987); and the Overseas Press Clubâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hal Boyle Award for his reporting from Jonestown, where he was shot and wounded while on assignment for the Washington Post (1978). DOROTHEA DIETRICH, PhD, a professor and curator of modern and contemporary art, has taught at Princeton University and held visiting appointments at Yale, MIT, Duke and Boston Universities, among others. She was last Chair and Professor of the History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. JUDY A. GREENBERG, Member, Board of Directors, the Center for Contemporary Political Art. She served as Director of The Kreeger Museum (1994â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2017), retired in June 2017, and presently serves as its Director Emerita. She was Founder of VisArts art center (formerly Rockville Arts Place, RAP), established in 1988. JACK RASMUSSEN, PhD, Director and Curator, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, the largest university-affiliated art museum in the Washington metro area. He was recently named Chair of the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC). In this role, he will drive the strategic direction of MSAC programs and funding for the state of Maryland.

E X H I B I T I N G A RT I S T S

Akinbo Akinnuoye Ali Beyer Alon Koppel Anatol Zukerman Beau Wild Beth Fox Heisinger Bev Reiley Branden Koch Bryan McGinnis Bryant Fernandez Carol Minarick Catherine Johnson Cathy Kleeman Chawky Frenn Christian Gerstheimer Christopher Zacharow Daniel Breslin David Bogus David Borawski David Estlund Debra Pearlman Donna Coleman Dorothy Fall

Eduardo Escamilla Marroquin Elena Soterakis Ellis Angel Epiphany Knedler Eric Corriel Eric Schweitzer Eric Wallen Eugenie Lewalski Berg Felipe Galindo Feggo Gary Aagaard George Kennedy Heather Paul Jack Swersie Jamie L. Luoto Jean Banas Jean Patrick Icart-Pierre Jennifer Onofrio Fornes Jim Boden Joe Nanashe John Jonik Jonathan Talbot Joseph Bigley Judith Rubenstein

Judy Polstra Juliette McCullough Kathleen M. Ramich Kelly Witte Kene J. Rosa Kenn Kotara Kerry Skarbakka Kevin Champeny Kevin Flynn Laurie Szujewska Leonard Dawson Leslie Macklin Leslie Robison Lucy Spencer M.A. Schindler Marcus DeSieno Margi Weir Mark Hendricks Martin Linder Mary Stanley MEME Merryl Cohen-Buttari & Ronnie Michael

Michael D’Antuono Michael Patrick Holt Michael Wartgow Michele Castagnetti Michèle Colburn Michelle Victoria Myra Eastman Nasrin Sheykhi Nikki Thompson Patricia Isaza Paul Kolker Paul-Felix Montez Peter Barnitz Rodney Durso Sarah Dillon Sarey Ruden Shantelle Fuller Stefani Reynolds Stephen Geddes Steve Cup Steven Felix-Jager Tom Monahan William DeHoff Zac Benson

A K I N B O A K I N N U OY E False Idol, 2016 Collage (magazine, calendar, and newspaper images on cardstock) 11" × 8 1/2"

I created this piece in the summer before the 2016 election, not realizing democracy’s nightmare would become a reality. I did it as a joke, believing that our society would choose a president that acted in their best—and rational— interest, that people would see beyond the facade. I had no idea that Trump being president would actually happen. This started out as a propaganda piece for the Democrats but has become so much more relevant as I witnessed real democracy breaking down over the last two years.

ALI BEYER The Birdâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the Word Mixed media with collage 13.75" Ă&#x2014; 9.5"

My artwork tends to discuss socio-political events and the world around me. This piece was created shortly after the election of Donald Trump as U.S. President. It comments on the use of social media by the sitting President about mundane matters as well as world events. It also touches on the seriousness underlying this election and how the underbelly of United States history has manifested today.

A L O N KO P P E L Post-Truth Billboards, 2016-2018 Photograph on a newspaper print

36" × 48"

Prior to the 2016 presidential election, I published a visual essay called 99 Trump Signs and 1 Hillary. The essay displayed 100 pro-Trump sign photographs (even the Hillary sign is a “Hillary for PRISON” sign). See the essay here: https:// medium.com/vantage/ 99-trumpsigns-and-1-hillary-9f6eef8b2ab8. Those photographs, all taken in the Hudson Valley (currently the contested District 19), was my attempt to show the political landscape where I reside and try to understand how this area, which previously voted strongly for Barack Obama, was now in favor of Donald Trump. After the presidential election, I started a new series of photographic work, building upon the subject matter from a different perspective. I created a series of “post-truth” ads, depicting what the next four years of President Trump might look like, in the form of large, propagandastyle billboards. Some of these billboards, created before the inauguration, already look quite 40

real and indeed some viewers get confused or upset and think they are real—but they are all created by myself in search for a channel to express myself and hopefully create a dialogue via art.

I continue to create more posttruth billboards, based on the latest news and developments in Washington, DC. Additional work from this series can be seen here: www.notlikehere.org/post-truth/

I believe that humor can play a part in healing ourselves. My hope is that this series works as a catalyst for understanding what possibly lies ahead.

A N AT O L Z U K E R M A N Mr. Trumputin, 2017 Acrylic on canvas

16" × 20"

In 2016 America elected a strange President, the one who fights America’s friends and befriends America’s foes. A President who robs the poor and gives money to the rich. A President who serves Russian oligarchs and American plutocrats, all while the middle classes in both countries suffer. A President who routinely lies to his electorate and plays with the lower instincts of people. A President whose mental ability is at the level of a schoolyard bully. A President who chewed up many world leaders, but is choking on Vladimir Putin.

B E AU W I L D Swirling Intrigue Mixed media on canvas

This non-objective abstract painting is about how Trump has created chaos in the Oval Office. Swirling intrigue, backstabbing, tweeting, lies. All have increased the polarization of the American people. Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s language distorts the truth and cannot build any type of consensus for us to move forward as a nation in a positive direction.

B E T H F OX H E I S I N G E R Trump Devouring America, 2016 Digital print on canvas 12" × 24"

Horror. Fear. Disgust. Uncertainty. These were my feelings on November 8, 2016, after Donald Trump won the presidential election. My dread of what lay ahead for us as a nation kept me from sleep that night. How could this vile, feckless, petty man be president? How could this dangerous, incompetent liar, fraud, racist, bigot, sexist, and xenophobe have secured enough votes? What will happen now? As the nightmare scenario of Trump’s victory unfolded on Election Day, Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring His Son haunted my subconscious. His dark painting has always horrified me, having seared its disturbing impression into my mind when I first saw it as a child. That election night, a satirical correlation between my anger and dread, and the allegorical themes, violent imagery, and madness of Goya’s painting combined: Trump as the would-be titan, the monster that destroys what he fears for his own narcissistic greed and power.

In Trump Devouring America, “America” is represented by the female form—a direct reference to Trump’s misogyny and abhorrent sexual misconduct. “America” also symbolizes the civil and human rights of women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, as well as our country’s ideals and our rule of law. Like Goya’s Saturn, with each self-serving bite, Trump eats away at “America” and perpetuates ‘destroy before you are destroyed’ no matter the consequences. That said, looking ahead to the midterm elections this November, I feel hopeful. Our resilience is unwavering. We too will survive this would-be titan.

BEV REILEY Enough Acrylic, collage 16" × 20"

As a young artist, I painted pretty pictures, pictures that would sell, pictures that someone would want to hang in their home to remind them of a special place, a special time. As a more seasoned artist, I find painting pretty pictures lacking in excitement and creativity, leaving me to wonder: Is this why I paint? Shouldn’t art inspire, provoke, be relatable, send a message or make a statement? My favorite artist is Frida Kahlo. Isn’t that what attracted me to her work— her capacity to convey the pain she felt, her anger and sadness? I created Enough because I was enraged by another school shooting, and at the same time so impressed by Emma and her classmates for standing up to the NRA, our gun-loving society, and the unwillingness of our politicians to do anything about it. Emma is a beautiful young lady. Symbolic with her shaven head, she reminds us of our own youth: hopeful, naïve, and understanding what needs to be 48

done while feeling frustrated that nothing has been accomplished. The number 17 represents the 17 deaths and the 17 non-fatal shootings. Photos of those so needlessly lost surround her. This work of art is a tribute to Emma, a representative of her generation: those youth crying out, “Enough!”

B R A N D E N KO C H The Firing of the Self Pen ink on watercolor paper 11" Ă&#x2014; 15"

This drawing was made between November 8th and January 20th, 2017, and thereafter. It represents and embodies a complicated spectrum of emotion experienced during a time of acute political and social uncertainty in America. My work features invented characters, self-portraits, and symbols that reflect upon current events and contextual art history. Set on a testing path, they are veered away from their goals in order to come closer to uncertain truths, or cast into unfavorable scenarios and environments. I am not a cynical person, but my work is

steeped in an absurd theatrical humor and social satire that confronts a sometimes sinister material. Dread, and the opposite of dread, I think, are dependent upon one another, just as politics is an impermanent mask to the transcendent. These things drive my hand to make a mark. I believe that visual culture can take these sorts of things on, and assist with provoking a humanist conversation about the past, present, and the progress that we can make together as a society.

B RYA N M C G I N N I S Taking a Hard Stance, 2018 Found image, condoms, wood 1.5" × 8"

The sculptures and installations I make emphasize a formal and iconographic dialog with U.S. history and current politics. Through personas, architecture, or knick knacks, my nostalgia from living in Pennsylvina has informed the imagery throughout my work. Particularly, Washington Crossing in New Hope and the suburban homes in Levittown. My approach involves in-depth research, which is then condensed and reformed, creating an intuitive personal response typically laced with gay humor. I exaggerate political characteristics with mixed media as a coping mechanism. I am a gay white male making art about straight white men, even though I have never felt included in their world. My work includes Taking a Hard Stance, a grouping of six phallic wooden columns, each separately wrapped with condoms depicting high-ranking men from the Trump Administration. The men include former Chancellor to the President Steve Bannon, acting Attorney 52

General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, Vice President Mike Pence and leader of the pack, President Donald Trump. Condoms are a tool for protection. Escalated nationwide political turmoil was caused by these few dicks. Taking a Hard Stance is a bold statement with entertaining undertones caused by political fears of expansive Trumpism. The condoms mirror an idea to protect society. As a gay male, sculpting a dildo out of wood was liberating, just the same as I find freedom while working with women’s lineal traits in sewing. I’ve grown up associating the woodshop as a man’s domain, while my mother's sewing room was the women’s sanctuary. Now, 20 years later I feel comfortable working in either room.

B RYA N T F E R N A N D E Z Trumplomacy, 2018 Digital print 20.5" × 30"

As an American who traveled to France during the early days of the Reagan administration, I met a few Europeans who were very concerned that we had this hawkish “cowboy” for a president. At the time, I sheepishly explained it away, saying, “It’s just an image. He probably won’t do anything crazy.” Unfortunately, I can’t confidently say the same thing about President Trump. Right from the start, his hostile attitude toward our allies left me and the rest of the world scratching our collective heads—particularly in contrast to how respectful he is regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin. This abrasive new attitude toward our allies makes me wonder how they must now see us, which was the inspiration for this piece.

CAROL MINARICK TREASON, 2018 Oil stick on panels, acrylic on wood 14.5" Ă&#x2014; 16.5" Ă&#x2014; 2"

NO WAY, fifty years ago as a political science student in Washington, DC, could I have imagined making this image about the president of the United States of America. Over the years, I worked hard to become an artist. And art is my language. So here I am at 76, along with so many other citizens, believing events do conspire to treason. TREASON, a harsh yet simple word in its appearance. Of ancient origin. I wanted to make it visible.

C AT H E R I N E J O H N S O N Who’s Your Daddy?, 2018 Acrylic on board 25" × 21"

The inspiration for this piece came from Soviet propaganda posters I saw while working for the US government during the Cold War. I recreated the background from a poster and replaced the young, fit, Soviet soldier with Trump’s image. His hands are disproportionately small, to remind the viewer of the insanity of the Republican campaign banter. The caption underneath says, “I serve the Soviet people.” Indeed, it appears Trump is serving Putin’s neo-Soviet system. The likelihood of collusion between Trump and Putin is abhorrent, especially considering the danger my colleagues and I faced while doing our jobs.

C AT H E R I N E K L E E M A N So Many Lies!, 2018 Hand-dyed and painted cotton fabrics, cotton batt 36" Ă&#x2014; 36"

Fact-checkers can barely keep up with the pace of lies emerging from the White House. It is alarming to me that the president has such a feeble relationship with truth and continues to spout lies even when the facts have been verified again and again. The Emperor has no clothes.

C H AW K Y F R E N N We the People # 31, 2018 Mixed media on poster 29" × 23"

My series We the People started before Trump came to office. It was born in outrage over Citizens United legalizing corruption and opening the floodgates for money to influence politics. This series is not just timeless in tackling the conflict between private and public interests, but also timely in addressing its perpetuity in policies favoring the super-wealthy, attacks on the Press, lack of civility, and the horrific rhetoric of President Trump and his administration. As an immigrant who fled a country in war, I am appalled by President Trump’s assaults on immigrants and refugees who are fleeing dire and inhumane conditions in their countries. Facing terrorism, violence, and utter poverty—often brought on them by our own policies and politics—most immigrants come to the US in search of a better life for themselves and their families. To paint them as rapists and criminals is an outrageous attack that inflames prejudice, bigotry, hatred, and racism. 62

My installation is interactive. Inspired by the image and the accompanying quote, the audience is invited to write a quote by a politician uttering words they are disgusted by on a sheet posted next to the painting. This will enable the audience to debate how tribal allegiance and wealth inequity erode democracy, liberty, and human rights. We the People informs and provokes as it critically and creatively confronts the collusion of political, economic, religious, and military powers. It champions citizens’ struggles for justice and dignity while decrying the apathy and greed of the ruling elite. “I worry very much what it does on the floor of the House and the Senate. How many people are going to have the guts to stand up to big money when they know that the airwaves in their states are going to be flooded with negative ads if they vote against Wall Street or vote against coal or oil? So I would say that one of the major issues that we’ve got to deal with is Citizens United. I think we need a constitutional amendment to overturn it. I think it would be a wonderful rallying point for folks all over this country.” Senator Bernie Sanders

CHRISTIAN JOHN GERSTHEIMER Dos Arms, 2017 Plaster, fiberglass, crystal resin, metal hardware, 6 Volt battery and servo motor 10" × 24" × 24"

Dos Arms is a kinetic, time-based installation about the violence perpetrated by US law enforcement and other national security agencies. Each arm is divided into more than one color because social injustice has been experienced by all ethnicities and the guilty are from all classes, races and genders. The arm’s unsynchronized movements demonstrate how one moves the other and that both move at a different speed as do the various branches of the government. A short video of the arms in motion can be seen athttps://vimeo.com/user17038861/ review/283361951/92ec52f8f3

CHRISTOPHER ZACHAROW American Dream, 2018 Acrylic on canvas and board 9" × 12"

My work responds to current political events—war and terrorism—but it deals with something more fragile and ethereal: the inner instability provoked by such dramatic occurrences. I consider my paintings a barometer of feelings and anxieties, but also of hopes shared by all of us. The final image is of a palimpsest, deriving its meaning from experience, awareness, and the process.

DA N I E L B R E S L I N Meaningless, 2018 Encaustic and objects on wood 34" × 23" × 1.5"

The echo chamber of politics tosses out the phrase “thoughts and prayers” with each new, horrific occurrence. Much too often, these occurrences are related to gun violence. With each of these horrors and the repetition of this statement, the phrase becomes even more meaningless. The situation in our country with gun control is clearly driven by greed, personal gain, and paranoia. It is well past time that the wellbeing of all citizens, especially the youngest and most vulnerable among us, becomes more important than the profit of a few. For me the phrase crumbles. It falls apart. It holds no meaning, other than to clearly delineate those who understand and care, and those who don’t. In working on this piece I was struck by the irony of figure targets generally being black in color, echoing the rampant issue we see of people of color dying due to gun violence—gun violence from all segments of our society.

DAV I D B O G U S Punk Necklaces, 2017 Ceramic, plastic chain 72" × 48" × 12"

These everyday objects foretell the ironic codification of consumer culture as it embodies our current society. In The Bogus Boutique, high-heeled shoes, punk rock lock necklaces, anchors, oversized fishing hooks, suitcases, cigarette lighters, cases of beer, life preservers, telephones, knives, perfume bottles, and cocktail garnishes are outrageously overpriced objects as viable subjects for branding and art. Questioning the notion that ordinary objects can become an “object of art,” Bogus encourages a debate about authorship and originality, dissolving the distinction between sanctioned museum pieces and iconic everyday consumed objects. The Bogus brand is a one-man factory manufacturing a bogus line of luxury products that no one can actually use or truly needs. Bogus’s witty humor

and ridiculously expressionistic pop pieces are arranged within an immersive gallery, staged to evoke the feeling of being in a department store. The sculptures are made from only the cheapest talc clay, wares are fired to a low temperature with the brightest colors possible, and Bogus is proud to offer genuine America-made products. The viewer can’t help but giggle at numerous highheeled shoes and oversized punk rock necklaces, but these and other pieces fit just fine in the context of a consumer society: dress up, eat, drink, smoke, play, and have sex.

DAV I D B O R AW S K I Cancel My Subscription to the Resurrection, 2013-17 LED sign, gaffers tape 9" × 28" × 6"

EXTREMIS MALIS EXTREMA REMEDIA DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE MEASURES

DAV I D E S T LU N D One, 2014 Inkjet printed digital photograph 18" Ă&#x2014; 24"

Political art is sometimes direct and explicit, but there is also power in work that is evocative without being reducible to a message. This piece of mine, One, falls into this category. It doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t read, to me, as a document of an event in time, but more as something imagined and vaguely troubling, perhaps from an anxious dream.

DEBRA PEARLMAN Babies Can’t Vote, 2018 Digital print on rag paper 23" × 36"

The image of a crying baby has long been a part of my visual vocabulary. As a silkscreen, printed on brown and white shopping bags, it was a response to witnessing poverty and segregation as an educator for The Museum of Modern Art. The bags were assembled as a pyramid in the windows of Printed Matter, for the installation Changing Demographics. Here I want to use images of crying babies to plead with voters: VOTE, because they can’t.

DONNA COLEMAN Unsafe Territory, 2018 Digital print on rag paper 32" Ă&#x2014; 18"

Something is going on that is starting to disturb the peace of our carefully separated lives. What can we as individuals do about it?

D O R O T H Y FA L L Enveloping the World, 2016 Ink on paper 24" × 31"

In my artistic life, my work has been primarily about nature that I have observed and experienced in the countries of my travels. Much of the art is abstract—my feelings, my experiences, as I have reveled in the beauty of our world. Recently I have concentrated on the living spirits of trees and forests, the roots and branches that reach out to envelop us. But now nature is deteriorating, as we can see from the extremes of weather: hurricanes, fires, unsafe air, the melting of the Arctic ice cap, resulting in the deaths and disappearance of species—and maybe the human race as well. Our country has withdrawn from efforts to delay these ecological changes caused by man. I also foresee the danger of a nuclear war.

The art I am submitting shows the enveloping dangers. Donald Trump is destroying our country and the world as we know it. Because of this ignorant tyrant, the world is endangered. The ecological system is already suffering changes that will have long-range effects. We must change today’s government in order to stop him. We must vote to rid ourselves of the supporting Republican Congress. My art here reflects what is happening and the ensuing dangers.

E D UA R D O E S C A M I L L A M A R R O Q U I N Some Very Fine People on Both Sides 2018 Pastel, acrylic and marker on bristol 11" Ă&#x2014; 14"

I exhibit my artwork under DUARD. I am a Chicano selftaught artist with a professional background in theater and currently train as a dancer. Born in the city of Cadereyta, Nuevo LeĂłn in Mexico, I currently live and work in New York City. My practice incorporates painting, sculpture, and performance to analyze social-political issues, gender, and sometimes sex.

ELENA SOTERAKIS Martin Johnson Heade’s Lake George Revisited 1862 (triptych), 2017 Digital print with oil and collage 10" × 20" (3 pieces)

My art is a call to action against the willful destruction of the natural world. The environmental impact of Trump’s presidency is not only jeopardizing the health of US citizens and our land, but that of the entire earth. Since assuming office, Trump has pandered to fossil fuel companies, rolling back environmental protections and regulations put in place by former administrations. We are no longer world leaders on environmental issues, a change made particularly obvious by the fact that we pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement. Trump has appointed climate change deniers and oil and gas executives to head energy and environmental agencies. As a result, scientists have been removed from positions in the EPA and the Department of Energy. After discussing these issues with climatologists and environmental scientists, the main lesson I learned is that artists need to work with scientists in communicating 84

that we are in the midst of a climate crisis. Catastrophic effects are happening now, not someday down the road in the future. As a result, we need a two-prong approach: science appeals to our logic, while art appeals to our souls. This is why I have focused my art practice on environmental issues. I believe that artists can influence people in a way that scientists cannot. A compelling, emotionally charged painting can have more of a visceral effect on people than scientific data and graphs. That is why I see my artwork as a form of activism and as part of a dialogue on ecological preservation. Lake George Revisited is a mixedmedia triptych in which I quote the Hudson River School painter Martin Johnson Heade. I transform a painting from 1862 into an image more representative of the 21st-century landscape and create three different scenarios of environmental degradation.

ELLIS ANGEL #Enough, 2018 Mixed media 16" Ă&#x2014; 16"

#Enough is a hashtag from the March for Our Lives gun reform movement following in the wake of so many school shootings. The posters in this series were collected from the March for Our Lives protest in New York City on March 24, 2018. The collected posters, after being photographed, are shredded and woven into a group-weaving incorporating many posters, signs, and statements on current issues. This series is at once a stand in solidarity and documentation of that moment of resistance and protest.

EPIPHANY KNEDLER OPPOSITE TOP

OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Restricted Area, 2018 Archival inkjet print 18" Ă&#x2014; 24"

In God We Trust, 2018 Archival inkjet print 18" Ă&#x2014; 24"

Restricted Area is from We the People, a photographic exploration of Washington, DC, in the contemporary contentious political environment. The city is the epitome of American politics. I lived in Washington, DC, during the Obama era and found the city full of hope and optimism. As a visitor during this past year, I have noticed many changes in the city. There is a schism throughout America within the political factions. With the election of President Trump, tensions have reached a breaking point. These issues are being seen in the environments of Washington, DC. Restricted Area is a clear visual representation of the turn from democracy. It visually explores the changes and political division in Washington, DC, today.

In God We Trust found influence in the current political tensions and in my recent move to the South. The South is home to a traditional Southern structure. Race and class distinctly separate the neighborhoods; the railroad is the traditional line of segregation in each small town. While communities are attempting to progress and meet the needs of some, other groups are being marginalized and ignored. This creates a schism in the community, which adds to the American political tensions. The majority of the South highly values religion and conservatism. Images like these are found in every town and, because of the current contentious situation, add to the current tensions.

ERIC CORRIEL tiny trump, 2018 Recycled cardboard, ink 24" × 11"

Donald Trump projects himself as a larger-than-life figure, but to me, his tempestuous and blustery personality is simply a cover for something very different: immense insecurity and mental fragility. When I see the president of the United States throwing paper towels at survivors of a natural disaster as though he were playing arcade basketball, I don’t see someone who is trying to lighten the mood, I see a person who either can’t or doesn’t want to be seen empathizing with minorities. When I see him condemn “both sides,” pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and retweet the most offensive anti-Muslim videos without context, I see a morally weak leader unwilling to condemn bigotry, hatred, and racism. When I see him engage in tit-for-tat reprisals with Rosie

O’Donnell, Mika Brzezinski, and Megyn Kelly, and boast about “grabbing [women] by the pussy,” I see a misogynist. And when he insults a Muslim Gold Star family, calls Mexicans “drug dealers, criminals, rapists,” and refers to black majority countries as “shitholes,” I see a xenophobe and a racist. In short, I do not see a big man when I look at Donald Trump. Quite the opposite. I see a small-minded and petty man. So small. I see tiny trump. And I am not alone. tiny trump gives those who see through trump’s bluster a means to exert themselves in a publicly visible and meaningful way.

ERIC SCHWEITZER A Confrontation, 2013 Water-based enamel paint on canvas 30" × 24"

A Confrontation is a pure example of my “automatic” work propelled by the angst of our times. Automatic, action-based art is not a novel process. I believe that automatic methods allow me to subconsciously lay down my altruistic thoughts on canvas. This particular work was “poured” and explores the theme experienced throughout all of history—those in power versus those forced to follow. Placing the subjects in the bottom-middle of the composition forces the viewer to perceive the center ominous black amorphous background, which symbolizes global uncertainty. Both figures are captured in the moment of an unbalanced altercation, a confrontation where one larger menacing figure with a forwardleaning stance hovers over a submissive, smaller, fragile, child-like, and less-organized figure. Both are red, to signify the

serious tone, yet there is a clear future with path unknown. This composition reflects the historical consistency of an omnipotent class of rulers (today’s “one percenters”) and a helpless low-to-middle-class majority. This work places the haves versus have-not scenario squarely in the center of the conversation, with nothing to hide. It is evident to all that protection is needed for the poor, lowly, helpless figure, who is clearly no match for the Confronter. It is my aim to continue to expose injustice in its most basic form and format.

E R I C WA L L E N Our Daily Assault, 2018 Acrylic, wax pastel, ink, gouache on paper 21.5" × 27"

Every day, this country is fed a morning spontaneous spoonful of Trump poison designed to distract and spin us and the media all day long, while corruptions continue behind closed doors. I collected 5 pages of Trump’s disgusting tweets and conflicting, idiotic statements. The shortest ones were chosen for this piece. These epithets are thrown like garbage against the USS America’s hull as I look out my cabin window in horror wondering if the ship will sink. Trump may be the entertainer of this cruel theatrical hoax, but powerful elites in this country have found him quite useful for their own agendas.

E U G E N I E L E WA L S K I B E R G Never Again, 2018 Linocut and Japanese woodblock print, water-based ink 2" Ă&#x2014; 2"

I believed this fight was over. Coming of age in the Sixties, with the feminist movement, the invention of the birth control pill, and the passage of Roe vs. Wade, I believed that women finally, finally had control over their own bodies. It saddens and sickens me to realize that might not be the case. The government has no right of access to my body. It must trust each woman to do what is physically, morally, and circumstantially right for her own self. Until the government does so, we do not live equally.

F E L I P E GA L I N D O F E G G O ICE Arrests, 2017 Digital art 8.5" Ă&#x2014; 11"

I am a Mexican-American artist (cartoonist, illustrator, fine arts) based in New York City since the early â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;80s. When Donald Trump began his presidential campaign in 2016 berating Mexicans, I was shocked and outraged. When he continued insulting other ethnic, religious, and minority groups, I just could not believe what I was hearing. And when he became president, it was too much. As an artist, I felt compelled to portray in my drawings the absurdity and painful reality of his administrationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s policies, which cynically exploit immigrants and other groups as scapegoats for the failures of America. These policies have only brought a reverse to the positive course the nation was previously taking, and going to dangerous extremes by dismantling policies that took years to accomplish and which benefited the country, the environment, and the world. After the election, I began to participate with my political imagery in exhibitions and outlets that were

critical of the administration, as well as in illustration collectives, a weekly cartoon in The Manhattan Times (a New York City newspaper), and with an upcoming class on Cartoons and Activism. I have tackled topics like immigration, the Dreamers, DACA, family separation, racism, the environment, Russia, etc. I believe challenging times demand thought-provoking art. I aim to make visual statements of impact. I feel the urge to create images in response to current events. I want to make an artistic contribution to influence social change. It is an honor to participate in this important exhibition.

GA RY A A GA A R D Being Jare (with Apologies to Chauncey Gardiner), 2017

In the classic movie Being There, many of the pundits, talk show hosts and political advisors mistakenly thought the sheltered Chauncey Gardiner (Peter Sellers) was a financial genius based on his gardening tips. This painting addresses the belief of many pundits (think FOX), talk show hosts (Limbaugh, Ingraham, Hannity, etc.), advisors (don't get me started) and Trumpites that Jared Kushnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s limited real estate experience makes Jared qualified to bring peace to the Middle East, solve the opioid crisis, initiate criminal justice reform and tackle a litany of other problems. With respect to expectations versus actual ability, I think Jared Kushner is our present-day Chauncey Gardiner minus the innocence (with apologies to Chauncey, of course).

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G E O R G E K E N N E DY

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The Four Freedoms in the Age of Trump Collage, colored pencil, acrylic on canvas board 11" Ã&#x2014; 14"

I am an artist with a long history of civic/political engagement. (I began my career drawing for the “underground “ press in the 1960s.) After the last election, I felt the need to express my disgust via my art, and thus created the attached parody of Rockwell’s famous Four Freedoms.

Of Worship

From Fear

From Want

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H E AT H E R PAU L Awakening, 2017 Acrylics on canvas 24" × 30"

I was greatly moved by participating in both the Women’s March on Washington in January 2017 and the later March for Our Lives in Washington in March 2018. Both protests were shocking and inspiring—in their size, the depth of passion, and the collective rage against a president and an administration that demeaned women, threatened their rights, and defended egregious, permissive gun laws. However, I also could see an “awakening”—a renewed energy and commitment to justice and

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human rights that hadn’t been harnessed in quite this way since the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Therefore, I chose to merge the marches and their participants in abstractions of pink and orange (gun safety). An aerial view of this sea of people and signs makes clear that this is a huge, unstoppable wave across gender and generations that will hopefully sweep through midterm elections and well beyond.

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JA C K S W E R S I E Constitutional Crisis!, 2017 Photographs 28" Ă&#x2014; 20"

You can love my political photoart or you can hate it. I really don't care. So long as it makes you think and/or feel. And, today, we have a whole lot to think about. And I don't feel very good about what I'm thinking. At a recent show, I heard a man say to his wife, "This guy is un-American!" as they stormed out of my booth. What piece provoked this fury? It was titled Constitutional Crisis! My work here is done.

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JA M I E L . LU O T O America: She Was Asking for It, 2018 Gouache on paper 15" × 19"

Created in response to the 2016 presidential election, America: She Was Asking for It was born from a nightmare and depicts a revealing portrait of not only America’s elected Head of State but also his wife and Vice President and Mrs. Pence. A variety of symbols evoke both an immediate visceral reaction—e.g., the Confederate flag—and an ongoing discovery of depravity represented by small painted details, such as the pins, that reveal contradictions and hypocrisy.

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I utilized the bright coloring effects of gouache to capture the flashy tone of media imagery, and intentionally made the work small to emphasize the insufficient attention and transitory coverage given to these issues by the media. The piece is floated atop an abyss-like black velvet to create an effect like that of a digital screen, and finally is encased in a tarnished frame, as if it is a dangerous artifact, warning of possible future outcomes.

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JEAN BANAS RAGE, 2012 Acrylic on canvas 48" Ă&#x2014; 48"

This painting represents the rage that I felt when I finally came to terms with the severe sexual abuse perpetrated by a man of cloth against two little girls who are close to me. I feel this rage again as I see and hear how our countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s supposedly trusted authority and leader used his power over subordinates to fulfill his sordid sexual desires. We must stop giving sexual predators a free pass.

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J E A N PAT R I C K I C A RT- P I E R R E OPPOSITE TOP

OPPOSITE BOTTOM

These new paintings are a reflection of the time; I am taking a critical view of social, political, and cultural issues facing the black community today. I attempt to reproduce familiar visual signs, arranging them into new, conceptually-layered pieces. The work is street- or graffiti-inspired, created using spray paint on found materials. I placed direct and concise captions across the surface of spray-painted images in order to encapsulate today's "Black Lives Matter" movement. I am merging the gritty facade and the aesthetic of graffiti art with unexpected phrases/slogans to catch the viewer’s attention. Using the language of contemporary issues,

I am appropriating images from their original context in graffiti murals and setting them as the background against which I embellish with quotes or phrases to provoke thoughts. I use clearly legible texts printed on metal plates set above the image surface. The images of "screaming" black men simply suggest the "struggle" that black people are enduring today. My work has always been a reflection on the black experience, but the new paintings are more contemporary in the sense of the use of graffiti art. The new works are different, but they continue to maintain a firm basis in black social, cultural, and political critique.

From the series Street Level, 2018 Spray paint and paint markers on wood panels and chainlink fence with metal signs 78" × 72"

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From the series Street Level, 2018 Spray paint and paint markers on wood panels and chainlink fence with metal signs 57" × 48"

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JENNIFER ONOFRIO FORNES Gear for the Contemporary Working Woman, 2017 Deconstructed English Riding Saddle, leather, thread, oil paint 12" × 13" × 11"

Gear for the Contemporary Working Woman (2017 prototype) is inspired by the working women of the Industrial Revolution. Concerned about sexual assault and safety, many women opted to wear chastity belts while working in the factories and manufacturing plants. Considering our president’s thoughts about women and the climate this kind of thinking promotes, it seemed fitting to bring back this essential “gear.”

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JIM BODEN OPPOSITE TOP

OPPOSITE BOTTOM

The series, Out of Paradise, started on the premise—what if Adam and Eve used free will and chose to willingly leave the Garden and to “go adventuring”?

Each piece has been treated so that the figures are in a landscape in which they may not quite comfortably fit in. The “landscapes” serve as theatrical backdrops much like painted backdrops in old photo studios. The action takes place in this theatrical set and the viewer is catching a moment of the implied narrative.

Sower of Discord, 2018 Mixed media 9" × 12"

The series is loosely based on the literary structure of journeys— Homer’s Odyssey, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Dante’s Inferno. Also, references are made to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and Ezra Pound’s Cantos; religious and cultural mythologies; the Theatre of the Absurd, philosophy. Each is a moment/event in which the viewer catches a glimpse of action—some are enigmatic, some require the viewer to create the narrative moment, some are of the uncertainty of a moment, some are the moment-before-the-moment.

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The Press is Not the Enemy, 2018 Mixed media 9" × 12"

The Trump Administration is another landscape of everchanging sameness of unrest, disruption, and discord.

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JOE NANASHE Untitled Red Cap with White Embroidery Removed, 2017 Red cap, white embroidery, glass case 12" Ã&#x2014; 12"

The ghost of the text is visible from the wounds left behind.

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JOHN JONIK OPPOSITE TOP

Neo-Christianity in The USA, 2006 Ink on paper 8.5" Ă&#x2014; 11"

The US government and corporate media have pretended to be antiFascist all along, yet they support Fascism in the sense of private interests interacting with public government, backed up by military and police force. At the same time, this US government has promoted itself as Christian, even with "In God We Trust" on currency and prayers before public events. If some cartoons can persuade some that there is a long-time charade afoot, that may be helpful for all.

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OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Dollar Salute, 2004 Ink on paper 8.5" Ă&#x2014; 11"

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J O N AT H A N TA L B O T Spin & Win, 2016 Acrylic paint on wood and plywood with steel reinforcements, steel bearings, aluminum and steel pins, Delrin, and flexible plastic 88" Ă&#x2014; 40" Ă&#x2014; 8"

Spin & Win is the result of my personal efforts to determine how to respond to the results of the 2018 US Presidential Election.

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JOSEPH BIGLEY Soldier for Paul Ryan’s Army, 2017 Hand painted sign, pyrite, mannequin, suit 120" × 96" × 18"

Embodying hypocrisy with a smile. Opportunism towers over principle. Selfrationalization, playing to a base whose ground is shifting through smoke and mirrors. Insatiable profiteering at the expense of the most basic principles of public service has been exposed through the happening of 45. Members of the power elite dressed as public servants who claim victimhood, moral clarity and family decency are overlooking accountability, preservation of standards and national detriment as they utilize a hollow directionless figurehead. Those who craft laws and slink East of the meridian, the title of this work could include dozens of scarlet constituent neglectors. The chosen figure seems to present a

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unique plastic demeanor fit for a mannequin. The privileged and self-righteous will go into battle to fight under self-proclaimed oppression against a population of increasing chromism, waving a flag of canine media.

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JUDITH RUBENSTEIN Woman on the Sidewalk, 2018 Linoleum print on paper 12" × 12"

This print, Woman on the Sidewalk, could be made into a poster with the caption, “Poverty is Political; Vote.” The linoleum print itself is part of a small edition. Posters could be made in large numbers, and sell for practically nothing.

multiple, and priced moderately, to say nothing of cheap-asdirt posters, reproduced in the 100’s. And, I involve community members in making art, thus my several performance art pieces and collaborative books.

Holland Cotter, New York Times art critic, writes that current political art does not address power, but shows how it works. This print, like the rest of my artwork, does that; it shows the sad workings of my society’s power.

Thus, my artworks and my community art projects are a combination of art and community work. I am proud to be continuing the tradition of NYC’s Works Progress Administration prints, of the Mexican Taller de Gráfica Popular graphics, and of the preponderance of art at protest marches, i.e., art in the service of community change.

It is important to me that my presentations of this reality be accessible to many. I therefore emphasize screen, relief, and lithographic prints on paper, which can be produced in

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J U DY P O L S T R A I Fucking Hate that Fucking Fucker, 2018 Hand embroidery on vintage girdle 13.5" × 12"

My mother taught me to hand embroider at the age of seven. My hand embroidery works often include text of a confessionary nature. The textiles I use are vintage, often inherited, abandoned. Domestic linens and undergarments are favorite canvases. I find the forced slow deliberateness of hand needlework to be therapeutic and calming—particularly in the face of the Trump administration. “I fucking hate that fucking fucker” was a statement I yelled at the TV one evening while watching Trump speak. The vintage black girdle (a gift from a friend who inherited it from her grandmother) to me is the perfect canvas for this statement directed at the genital-grabbing potus and for the #metoo movement.

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JULIETTE MCCULLOUGH 'Abduction 1' (The Abduction of Truth and Justice by Greed and the Usurping of Power), 2017 Oil on canvas 46" × 50"

This is the first in a series of three images inspired by our present political situation. It purposely does not show the president, or any living individual, but aims to depict the energies and movements of which this government appears to be a result. It is indeed a tongue-in-cheek reference to our president’s advertised reputation with, and attitude toward, women. This is based on the Rubens painting Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, chosen and manipulated for the following reasons: the use of a historical, classical subject to

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resonate with the idealistic, noble, high-minded, highly educated, solid foundation set down by the Founding Fathers of this country— in deep contrast to the apparent recent political events and understanding in our time. The image is intended to be ironic. The women are portrayed with cartoon simplicity (mere token, reduced creatures) in contrast to the fully fleshed-out males who represent the powerfully destructive and negative patriarchy. The horses represent the forces of nature and the environment, and respond to the situation with horror!

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K AT H L E E N M . R A M I C H Stop War!, 2018 Mixed media assemblage with electronics 12" × 8" × 14"

The familiar traffic signal works in conjunction with our conditioning toward directionality in the name of order. This signal’s indoor placement is intentionally suspicious even before seeing colors appear behind overriding messages of WAR, PEACE and LIFE, the latter hanging precariously between the other two. The lights change in random order and timing to prevent a predicted sequence. In an era of political chaos, misdirection, and polarization, the simplicity of the three primary colors, learned in the innocence of childhood, are overlaid with weighty verbiage of human conflict, so that comforting undertones give way to unsettling thoughts. Or not, depending on what the viewer chooses to experience. The daily struggle to make sense of, and temper our emotions related to, a political ship that has lost its moorings, as the threat of war hangs ominously in 132

our collective consciousness, is wearing. We learned this week of unnamed White House staffers reporting the ongoing need to thwart Donald Trump’s reckless provocations toward nuclear-armed adversaries. And WAR references more than intercontinental disasters. It speaks to the endless conflicts provoked and intensified by those for whom diversity of any kind is a threat. All the while, the ubiquitous outdoor traffic signals in our world click efficiently through their timed changes, belying the fact that order has become ever more elusive in a nation guided by an unsteady hand and a delusional measure of American greatness.

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K E L LY W I T T E Not Up For Grabs, 2017 Linoleum relief print and silkscreen print

I am a shy person who will do anything to avoid an argument. I get nervous when discussions lean towards politics. Our society has faced so many issues and challenges within the past year and it has become difficult to avoid these discussions. It is always a great opportunity to hear both sides of an issue, discuss different opinions and learn from another, but I feel uncomfortable when asked about my views. I am realizing that there is no better time than now to stop being scared and to voice my opinion about the issues that are important to me. Since I get nervous speaking to others about my views, I found that my art can be used as a platform to voice my concerns about womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rights. In the past

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year I have grown more worried about womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rights, especially with regard to healthcare. I am concerned that our access to the services, examinations, and medications that we need will be grabbed away from us. I feel that no matter where a woman falls on the political spectrum, she should be able to make her own decisions about her body and healthcare. She should also be provided with all of the information and resources that she needs to make a decision that is best for herself and her circumstances. Creating a piece of artwork about my worries seems trivial, but if it is helping to continue or start a dialogue about the issue at hand, then it is serving its purpose.

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KENE J. ROSA Body Image, 2018

I always gather bits and pieces from visual materials and reconstruct them in my head. In this charged climate, spearheaded by one I call â&#x20AC;&#x153;Agent Orange,â&#x20AC;? I have been inspired to create these small collages from media sources, since said sources are the archenemy of the powers that be. Body Image came to me when I saw the image of the ample model and thought of the priggish way in which Agent Orange disrespects women. The quote is from another person who actually is a beacon for women. The idea of the piece is to illustrate that body image is not the problem. Perception of and collusion with misogynistic ideologists create an atmosphere of disrespect and dismissal of those who do not resemble or expound the paradigms of these misguided believers.

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K E N N KO TA R A Believe me: Small Flag (4th iteration), 2018 Hand punched Braille on gold foil paper on felt 39" × 65"

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. Ludwig Wittgenstein Believe me is a self-reflective artwork exorcising meditation about one's character, actions, and motives. Signifying language, value, and principles, the work is constructed of thousands of gold ‘brick’ panels, each displaying inflammatory, derogatory and incendiary words spoken and texted by US President Trump. Collected as data and transcribed in Braille, the title is taken directly from his language as his means to influence, infect and validate. As an individual, parent, educator, and a US citizen, this level of language used by anyone in a public forum is unacceptable. Believe me is an

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ongoing protest. It is a time-based work on inexpensive gold foil paper and codified to intentionally obstruct information, entangling the viewer within its materiality, content, and irony. Come see yourself. You will be very, very, very amazed! Believe me. Through my Braille works, I am exploring the anthropologic quality of Braille and considering the metaphorical implications of human interaction. I think of what it is like to possess perfect vision, yet the junction of one’s philosophies and ideologies creates impairment. When we can’t see beyond our own ideas, we accept them as sufficient. What if we were to shift, even slightly? Might a glimmer recalibrate our optics, our perceptions?

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K E R RY S K A R B A K K A Bloodline, 2017 Archival pigment print 60" × 40"

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion...." Nelson Mandela tweeted by Barack Obama after the Charlottesville, VA Unite the Right Rally For more than 20 years, my art has met at the intersection of the studio arts and performance. Skills learned from martial arts and rock climbing allowed my creative practice to evolve to integrate daring self-performances with constructed photography. Incorporating video and sculpture into my approach, my work investigates instability, confusion, and uncertainty. While the core of my practice has remained consistent over the years, my artistic endeavors have grown to encompass themes of survival, incorporating the omnipresent ideologies of nationalism and new tribalism into the work. Perhaps, however, the 140

most profound change reflected in my art has been the birth of my first child, a boy. Over the last two to three years, out of concern for his future, the sociopolitical environment, and the imperative to raise a “proper man,” my art and body have become vehicles to channel the crisis of masculinity festering within the white male community. Upset at political correctness, the loss of jobs, and a way of life, the angry white male has forcibly reshaped the socio-political landscape. My current work engages this ideological insurgence, drawing from personal experience growing up in an authoritarian fundamentalist household on a small farm outside Pulaski, TN (the birthplace of the KKK), and eventually enlisting in the US Army. Recognizing how ideological differences are cultivated under specific influences, my current work seeks to make a greater contribution to race and identity as the story of America continues to unfold; in search of what it means to be white and male in the world today.

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KEVIN CHAMPENY Defiance 4,000 sculpted & hand cast urethane middle fingers 72.5" Ă&#x2014; 53" Ă&#x2014; 1"

I create a style of work that blurs the lines between photography, painting and sculpting. Mosaics enable me to elicit the tension and stories between hand-sculpted and cast pixels and the overall image they compose. I want my art to open a conversation for the viewer. I hope people discovering and viewing my pieces will connect their own experiences to the choices I made when creating the work.

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K E V I N F LY N N What does a Coup D’etat Look Like? 2017 Silver halide color photograph 16" × 20"

We live in exciting times. During 1972-74, I worked for a major metropolitan newspaper as a copyboy. One of my many duties was to maintain the teletype machines, which provided national and international news from the Associated Press, United Press, and the New York Times. As a result of my unique position, I was the first at the paper to read breaking news (as it typed and printed). I would then rush these stories to the editors. Thus, I followed the break-in of the DNC Headquarters by the White House “plumbers” and the subsequent events that led to Nixon’s resignation. The parallels then and now are unnerving. I truly believe that this president has been compromised by parties of a foreign government via his real estate transactions and holdings. It is a frightening thought for us as a nation. We live in exciting times.

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L AU R I E S Z U J E W S K A MANdate, 2017 Paper laminated in plastic 16" Ă&#x2014; 23"

MANdate is a protest print/poster made in response to the Trump campaignâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s suspected hacking and collusion with Vladimir Putin of Russia in the hacking of the 2016 United States presidential election.

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L E O N A R D DAW S O N Crystal Clear and America divided (#1) Wood, paper and acrylic 20" × 20"

This entry is part of a series of 36 works in an art installation entitled America the Beautiful. While the piece can stand alone, it remains part of the whole. The message being expressed is only a small glimpse into the larger misdoings and questionable behavior. This body of work is a sardonic illustration of America’s deeds and ideology. It earmarks moments, time periods, social encounters, and deliberations. It offers accounts of those memories noteworthy of remembering, because they provide a time for reflection. It is neither meant to give any false impressions nor create animosity. America the Beautiful is one individual’s interpretation of his observation of others’ interpretations.

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More and more frequently, it seems as though the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many. Fewer and fewer constituents are recognized as being worthy of respect or importance. This new ideology bears a resemblance to censorship and oppression. No need for wishful thinking: the time has come... time to stimulate discourse. Throughout this presentation, numerous icons/images are frequently repeated. They do not reflect nor have reference to any one person or group; they are vehicles/elements/entities of expression. In turn, they would allow for the development of visual literacy and provide the wherewithal for understanding.

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LESLIE MACKLIN For Escape Use Only, 2018 Porcelain barbed-wire, found object, photocopied and pasted images 10' × 6' × 10'

I live in a small town in southern Colorado that is predominantly Hispanic, and I work with students who are predominantly the children of first-generation immigrant families. As part of their support system, these students share with me the daily struggles shouldered by their parents, grandparents, friends, and relatives, all of whose lives have been negatively impacted by the roller-coaster that is immigration “reform” during the current, and previous, presidential administrations. It is not unreasonable for the government to seek methods for organization and documentation at the borders. However, current policies perpetuate decades of cruelty and severe human rights violations and stand in opposition to the values our country strives to represent.

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In For Escape Use Only, delicate porcelain barbed-wire rests on iron fence posts, spanning the gap between the viewer and a desert landscape. The image of the landscape is hastily pasted onto the surface of wooden planks, occupying a metaphorical space of uncertainty, like something that appears real or possible but is not in fact so. These border fences are meant to separate, but I ask the viewer to contemplate at what cost?

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LESLIE ROBISON Betsy to Blame, 2017 Video 3 min, 56 sec

The work I make is a direct reaction to our current political climate. I use symbols to communicate relationships of power and to investigate the origins of a particularly American picture of what disparate power relations look like. Nothing has changed, it has only become more clear.

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LU C Y N O R M A N S P E N C E R I.C.E. Ankle-Bracelet, 2017 Salt, paraffin, leather, plastic 10" Ă&#x2014; 11" Ă&#x2014; 6"

President Trump requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at the Karnes and Dilley Texas Immigration Detention Centers to secure an"ankle-bracelet" onto illegal immigrants seeking asylum. I accompanied a Guatemalan mother, her 13-year-old daughter, and 11-year-old son to Alexandria, Virginia, US Immigration Court. The mother wore the 3-pound GPS monitor attached to leathercovered metal, which cannot be removed except by ICE officials: it is a condition of their release and assurance of the court hearing to request permanent US residence. Her bracelet battery charge alert rang out loud and clear during court proceedings. All she could do was turn it off somehow, since

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there were no recharge outlets. The bracelet is very visible, hot, and causes abrasions. She asked the judge to remove it, but he only could send her to check in at ICE that day and return to the same court in three months. I lost contact with these asylum seekers. In their memory, and to alert unknowing people that this shackle-like-bracelet is worn by tens of thousands of other illegal immigrants, I carved this foot to look worn and weary, then attached a facsimile GPS onto leather around the ankle. This monitoring is run by B.I.Inc., a subsidiary of the second-largest prison company, which operates immigration detention centers.

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M.A. SCHINDLER Nurse MAGA, 2017 Acrylic on canvas, stainless steel, found objects, photograph, construction tape 30" Ă&#x2014; 40"

America is ailing, riddled with irrational leadership. When I started whacking away at this canvas, I realized I was reliving the confusion, helplessness and fear I felt when hospitalized as a small child. The pain of awakening to find Trump elected as President just about approximates the incomprehensible jolt of a spinal tap. The asylum nurse stands guard, armed and waiting to Make America Great Again. The exit is barred. Behind bars is an imploring figure, a photograph of my body print on an old tablecloth.

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On the table is an antique safety pin inscribed with the number 68, evoking the year when visions of a new America were born. But that baby is missing from the picture. Only the weathered pin remains. The danger/peligro tape is self-explanatory.

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MARCUS DESIENO 52.143200, -4.394850, 2016 Archival pigment print 16" × 20"

In our increasingly intrusive electronic culture, how do we delineate the boundaries between public and private? No Man's Land: Views From a Surveillance State is a body of work that interrogates how surveillance technology has changed our relationship to—and understanding of— landscape and place in the current geopolitical climate. To produce this work, I utilize surveillance cameras, public webcams, and CCTV feeds in pursuit of the “classical” picturesque landscape and the sublime. The resulting visual product becomes dislocated from

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its automated origins and leads to an investigation of land, of borders, and power. The very act of surveying a site through these photographic systems implies a dominating relationship between man and place. How can we move forward as a global community to address issues of clandestine surveillance and government abuse? Questioning the pervasive nature of surveillance is an essential conversation in our post-Edward Snowden society. Ultimately, in No Man's Land, I hope to undermine these schemes of social control through these photographs— found while exploiting the technological mechanisms of power in our surveillance society.

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MARGI WEIR Screaming Wheel 2, 2016 Digital ink print on hand-cut paper 12" × 12"

In this piece a screaming head (an innocent baby or a monk) is the central image. It is surrounded by an inner ring that says “Make America Hate Again,” and pushing out from that ring like stamen of a flower are the tiki torches used by the white supremacists in the Charleston March of 2017. Behind the tiki torches is a ring of silhouettes of hooded men with their hands raised. Next is a ring of black birds that symbolize Jim Crow, surrounded by hooded KKK members. The final outer ring is made up of brick walls with the words, “Big, Beautiful, Border, Wall”. In this piece, again, the only available response in the face of the manifestation of so much hate, is to scream.

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MARK HENDRICKS Repeat Until You Puke, 2017 Mixed media building blocks 16" Ă&#x2014; 16" Ă&#x2014; 4"

The 2016 US presidential election was expected to break with the 220-year tradition of electing white men. Instead of cementing this divergence from the past, it continued to follow the 230-year history of electing men as US president. This building-block medium facilitates the exploration of context and variations within the repetition of US presidential elections. Fifteen of the sixteen blocks each present three presidents, along with ephemera symbolic of their campaign era, plus the term count. A sixteenth block represents reactions and missed opportunities of never electing a woman.

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Every political event, each face of a block, is a reaction to repeated events and anticipation of future events. While interacting with the blocks, one political event, one face of a block, can build on previous events or obscure them. It can support future events or lie in opposition to them. In a 230year repetition of electing male presidents, the US elected Donald Trump. An out-of-the-closet racist/misogynist now leads the country. We repeat until we purge.

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M A RT I N S T E V E N L I N D E R Liberty Execution, 2018 Manila rope, United States of American flag 48" × 10" × 4.75"

Liberty Execution is a sculptural act accentuating the degradation of human liberty in the Trump era United States of America 2017. The woven work unites powerful imagery of the American flag with a hangman’s noose. The hangman’s noose signifies a concurring history of racism and a society committing national suicide through its self-destruction of core values and ideals. The barbed manila rope with its thirteen turns represents the continued struggles and suffering of Americans as they combat increasing dominance by elite supremacists. The upside-down American flag, representative of the nation in distress, embodies the once-free democratic nation in a moment of polarization and upheaval. The bouquet form reflects the once-beautiful national vision of “liberty for all.”

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M A RY S TA N L E Y

visions of strangers. Invite global generosity and decency. Work their way into the souls of the desperate.

Paper Trail. Hate., 2017 Ceramic 60" × 36" × 36"

In this work, a mother and her children rush towards the US border. Post-WWII texts that affirm the human status and dignity of all persons mark the paper trail they follow. Perhaps this paper trail activated the recent resistance to separating refugee and immigrant parents and children, resistance arising from Americans across the political spectrum.

In 2018, people of good will, fearing for the fate of our democracy, hope Robert Mueller will definitively reveal the paper trail that leads to the end of the Trump presidency. While that may happen, there remains the uneasy sense that Trumpism itself would not end, no matter how overwhelming and credible the evidence Mueller uncovers. My small sculptural installation takes on the challenge of tracking a far more complicated, ubiquitous, and undeniably American trail, the paper trail of hate. My work seeks the source of the visceral, cruel hatred against immigrants and refugees that powers Trump’s base. I suggest that intellectual works presented as mere attempts to describe the world as it is have actually softened the beach for this contemporary assault of racism, nativism, rabid white nationalism, and cruelty. Such intellectual works are the scaffolds of walls, of policies that rest on dehumanization. Still. Books and ideas also empower alternative 166

A casually cruel golden hand guards the wall my refugee family faces. Trumpian, it does not bother with a bold STOP gesture. Or even a middle finger. Rather a finger flick. Immigrants and refugees flicked away like a bug on a lapel. Vermin. Vectors. Perhaps crushed if they don’t scuttle off. After the dustup around separation settles, the hand remains. Trump uses racism because he can. Because it is as American as apple pie. Because it has a long intellectual tradition. Strangers are often a source of curiosity and wonder. But we sometimes cast them as the physical embodiment of danger. A threat to white culture. Agents of white racial genocide. I offer the possibility that refugees and immigrants carry with them dense complicated cultures and histories. Complex beings, they demand time and effort to be understood. Neither murders and rapists, nor one-dimensionally heroic.

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MEME 99Â˘ shrimp cocktail, 2018 Dip pen 20" Ă&#x2014; 30

A pre-election metaphor/analogy/ prestidigitation/deduction/ illation. In a loose style of satirical 18th-century copperplate etchers, especially William Hogarth. The effect of the election not only in Washington, DC, but also nationally, with extraordinarily cavalier dismantling of historical and cultural resources.

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M E R RY L C O H E N - B U T TA R I & RONNIE MICHAEL #Never Again, 2018 Mirror tiles, color tiles, newspaper print, gun replica, bullets, people 37" × 25" × 37"

The crack of gunfire is an all too frequent sound in our country. It is heard in the streets of our cities, in our otherwise quiet neighborhoods and in our classrooms. And yet, those tragic cracking noises continue unabated, unchecked by the present Administration. We have decided to protest this horrendous situation by making our own cracking sounds. By smashing and piecing together thousands of tiles, we hope to make a statement symbolizing the distressing prevalence of insufficiently controlled gun ownership in our nation. Red, white and blue are the recurrent themes in this piece. #Never Again on an M15 replica, newspaper headlines and photos of horrific events cover the background. Red and white stripes create the frame with the addition of bullets and children to line the border.

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Composed of mirror material, this work reflects the appalling destruction of too many guns and the frustration of the continuing refusal of President Trump to address this problem. President Trump has instead come down on the side of the NRA and amplified the suffering of gun victims and their families. Trump’s policies on gun control are one of his most “deplorable” actions. O beautiful for spacious skies For amber waves of grain For purple mountains majesty We’ve brought an awful stain America, America Please stop this senseless grief And crown thy good with brotherhood And bring us some relief! No More Silence End Gun Violence

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MICHAEL D'ANTUONO Comrades!, 2018 Oil on canvas 48" × 48"

Comrades! is the visual manifestation of my horrification at the dismantling of our democracy designed by an aggressive foreign adversary and executed by a president with authoritarian ambitions. More disturbing to me is the willingness of partisan Republicans in Congress to abandon their oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, for what they perceive as their own best interests. The individuals depicted in the rows of Trump sycophants guarding the dubious Trump/ Putin relationship from justice are just a small sampling of those willing to put party above country. My depiction of a confident Putin firmly in control with his hands on the reins of the Republican Party, being hugged by a subservient President, represents that all is going according to

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plan. The red bra hanging from Trump’s pocket doubles as a red flag that our president might be potentially compromised by Russian prostitutes and/or domestic porn stars. The Russian architectural influences such as the spires adorning the White house are a metaphor for the inexplicable influence Russia has on our president’s foreign policy. I’ve given the piece what I consider an appropriate circus-like look to it as a reflection of Trump’s P.T. Barnum-like style and the farce that the Republican Party has devolved into. Formerly the party of anti-Russia Cold War hawks who used to accuse Democrats as being weak on defense, the Republican Party now refuse to defend us against the foreign adversary that hacked our elections in their favor. In my opinion, as in my painting, the hypocritical charade that is the current GOP brings new meaning to the term ex-patriot.

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M I C H A E L PAT R I C K H O LT The Last Angry, 2016 Analog collage on wood 11" × 14"

Growing up in the Rust Belt during its decline in the ‘80s had an intense influence on my perceptions and way of thinking. More specifically, I grew up in a lake town in Ohio that at one time contained a thriving middleclass relying heavily on local automotive manufacturing, and it was situated in the shadow of a large amusement park. When the manufacturing jobs dried up or were shipped out, the opportunity to participate in the idea of the American Dream went with them. By the time I was a teen in the late ‘80s, I was still hearing the repeated lie of the American

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Dream, but was acutely aware that I was not participating in it, nor would I ever likely have the chance. Our playground was the apocalyptic wasteland of the Cold War. We were nourished by the bread and circus of the amusement park. My fascinations and obsessions became cemented in the plastic representations of American culture and reality, the lies that consumerism whispers to us, and the objects we find our identity in. Concepts of access, opportunity, identity and the wasteland remain prominent in my thoughts to this day.

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M I C H A E L WA RT G O W The New Social Conscience, 2016 Acrylic, graphite, inkjet prints on panel 23 3/4" × 25 3/4"

Through absurdity and controversy, the collective conscience of the country has been destroyed by Trump’s use of a social media platform. His egodriven, divisive, and polarizing statements have become widely accepted by an increasingly large group of supporters who believe that “Trump being Trump” is somehow good for them and the country. The constant bombardment of ridiculous statements and outrageous claims by the president has desensitized the country and we are no longer able to (or care to) see the truth. Large swaths of the country easily look past hypocrisy, vulgarness, disrespect, sexism, racism, and

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blatant lying to see a president that they believe upholds the ideals of our country. Trump’s constant defense of his ego has put everyone at risk. Those who dare to look past his barrage of shocking statements to see what he is covering up are quickly turned into enemies of Trump and defined as anti-American. The foundation of our country has been shaken and what used to symbolize the best of it has been destroyed through the arrogance of the president. What is left is a curtain of words, whose purpose is not to inspire or lead, but to protect the fragility of someone ill-equipped to see past his own reflection in the mirror.

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M I C H E L E C A S TA G N E T T I Matryoshka, 2018 Poster print 24" Ă&#x2014; 24"

Only through humor can we highlight the ridiculousness of the current affairs and hopefully educate into making better choices in the future.

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MICHÈLE COLBURN Lawyers, Guns, and Money (State of the Union), 2018

My work has consistently dealt with American violence—that which is deep-seated in our culture and that which we export. Materiality and object-based art with forays into performance have become part of my body of work. Since 2014, my artworks’ materials have included surplus military trip wire produced for the Vietnam War and gunpowder that has been rendered inert. My hand intervenes and mingles amongst these materials of violence, and transforms them. They do not retain their primary purpose and have been rendered impotent. Lawyers, Guns, and Money (State of the Union) carries content that relates to gun violence in America, whether at the hand of civilians or police, no matter the circumstances. It is choking our country, permeating our collective landscape, and creating a culture of extreme fear. Under Trump, this issue remains status quo. 180

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MICHELLE VICTORIA #PredatorInChief, 2017 Acrylic paint, water slide decal paper on canvas 18" Ă&#x2014; 24"

Making art is a way to express myself and a way to share myself with the viewer. I came to making art rather late in life and I continue seeking better forms of communication. What does the visual form offer? How can we connect with one another in a way that brings meaning to both of us and can transform us individually and collectively? I want to create pleasing aesthetics, as well as art that provokes thought and transforms. In these times, political art is so crucial. We must expose truth, inspire and keep creating new forms of communication. So much is at stake in this present moment and I am grateful to have this means of expression as a form of protest. I have organized, protested in the streets and to be making art in this historical time is so important to me.

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MYRA EASTMAN Traveling by Rail, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 20" Ă&#x2014; 16"

This series of six small paintings imagine the treacherous journey migrants and asylum seekers face traveling on top of freight trains heading north to escape dire conditions in their home countries.

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NASRIN SHEYKHI Donald Trump No.4, 2018 Oil on canvas 24" Ã&#x2014; 24"

Trump is not matched by the place where he is as president

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NIKKI THOMPSON Consequences, 2018 Paper, thread, ink, bookcloth, book board 19" × 27"

Both my working process and my artist’s books consist of layers and layers, like the leaves of an artichoke with a heart at the center. With Consequences specifically, I am looking at three issues that are repeatedly brought up in the media surrounding Trump: xenophobia, racism, and sexism. His words have consequences. The quotes are in red, the color of blood, while the actual -ism words are white on white to indicate the blindness with which he uses those hateful words. I used blue bookbinding thread to symbolize our country: red ink, white paper, and blue thread. The entire book closes up, similar to an accordion with red bookcloth as the cover. While my art in general touches that which every person experiences—the end of a relationship, illness, family, politics—this work in particular address issues we are facing as nation.

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The artist’s book format, which is primarily what I work in, is rich in multi-dimensionality: I can draw, letterpress, silk-screen, collage, sew, write, and more. Additionally, the details are as important as the whole. The materiality—the sensuality of texture, color, weight, transparency—is important in my artist’s books. The visual language of drawing, photography, collage, typography plays an essential role as well. And finally, the fourdimensional progression of pages, structure, and engineering gives my books that “wow” feeling, according to people who see them.

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PAT R I C I A I S A Z A The Swamp King Pricktator, 2018 Mixed media 48" × 68"

BACK I created this mixed media piece, The Swamp King Pricktator, out of the rage I could no longer contain. Criminal abuse of immigrant children in McAllen, Texas, was the last straw. All the materials used in this piece (with the exception of the varnishes and the insulation board on which it is mounted, light-weight and shallow like the man himself) were collected in our own New York State swamp— the once beautiful Hudson River, now again, thanks to ‘Swamp King,’ open to polluters. They include cotton tree cotton, an allergen which makes me cry tears I welcome as a distraction from the grief I feel for my country; water chestnuts, the ‘devil’s claw’ whose invasive tendrils foul the river just as the lies he spews

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root and spread hatred across the nation. They include incinerator ash stones, in this case benign, sometimes toxic like the man. They include flies attracted to and stuck in the rot, straw and other dead plant material, dead like the man’s conscience. I wanted this piece to suggest that, despite what we see happening daily in this country, evil will not triumph, its own slime will drown it. I realize the piece is provocative; the provocation has been great! The back of the piece is a broken gold bar with, on what looks like a tombstone, the words “FAKE president, billionaire, husband and ultimate Pricktator"—and for the Latinos, "pendejo!"

FRONT

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PAU L KO L K E R Tiptoe through the Tulips, Synthèse 2018 Inkjet and acrylic on canvas 33" × 33"

Using a painterly process called synthese, developed by our studio, we have transformed photographs of a field of tulips, President Trump, and Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle taken from Getty Images into a vibrant palette of reds, blues and their tints and shades; over which the dots of an overlain abstract halftone painting have become suffused with the subjacent colors. Tiptoe through the Tulips, Synthèse, 2018 is a painting of Queen Elizabeth and President Trump both tiptoeing through the tulips with pomp, propriety, and the circumstance of inspecting

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the Queen's honor guard. Artistic license permits the beholder of Tiptoe through the Tulips to use her perceptual biases and intuitions to imagine what the Queen and President were saying to each other or silently thinking about at that photoshopped moment. As in this art experiment in perception, we merely reflect our own feelings about tiptoeing, tulips, Queen Elizabeth, President Trump, and the red and blue politically correct colors.

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PAU L - F E L I X M O N T E Z U.S. & Global Anti-slavery monument project, 2018 Poster 24" × 36"

New York Times, December 2015 article: “There are no anti-slavery, anti-human trafficking monuments anywhere in the United States... While there are over 1500 monuments to the Confederacy.” My human rights monument called Freedom always, anti-slavery monument is a world perspective monument addressing human slavery, women’s rights and trafficking, and vast economic enslavement of workers worldwide. The design of the monument is meant to be and become a symbolic icon for breaking free from oppression and thus usable by all groups national and worldwide. Its visual pop form not only abstracts this iconic ”chains being broken” but mirrors the tone of the very methods used

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in slavery in the United States, that of chaining another human being. In my research for this monument sculpture, I discovered what few know: that the Statue of Liberty, our nation’s grand symbol of freedom, opportunity, and immigration, is a woman wearing shackles with broken chains. So the irony is that the struggle for women’s rights in the face of enslavement within the society and culture of the US was recognized over a hundred years ago. How much longer shall we seek to enslave, deprive, subject billions to second-class status, and practice vast brutal exploitation and marginalization?

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PETER BARNITZ The Wall: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, 2017 Gold leaf, mixed media, acrylic, wood 9" Ă&#x2014; 54"

A rendition of the proposed metaphorical/physical "Trump Wall", to be built along the southern border of the United States of America and Mexico. It is a politically neutral sculpture that sparks a conversation about issues surrounding legal/illegal immigration and border security. The aesthetically pleasing, free flowing "golden border" sculpture contrasts with its heavy subject matter. Do fences really make good neighbors?

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RODNEY DURSO Disconstructing Trump, 2018 Inkjet print 26" × 42.25"

April 2016, I watched Chris Matthews of MSNBC interview Donald Trump. I observed, for what I think was the first time during this campaign, Trump seemingly off-balance, and not full of his usual confidence and narcissistic bravado. Considering his normal unflappable nature, this seemed odd, and so I decided that I needed to capture this somehow. I began to photograph the TV screen with my iPhone, and, using the high-speed (multishot) function, I took about 300 photos in less than 10 minutes. With these images I began to build collages that, to me, capture Trump’s multiple personalities. In these works, I believe, his true conflicted and disturbing nature begins to be revealed. At once contradictory, creepy, binary, multi-layered and unsettling, I’ve only started to reveal the real

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persona. Dismantling, cutting, disassembling, rearranging, then reassembling this imagery is the essence of Disconstructing Trump! I spent most of May 2016 at the American Academy in Rome as a visiting artist. I arrived there with hundreds of color printouts of Trump that would eventually become this series. Having limited resources at the Academy, I did what came most naturally—I began cutting and collaging together these many disparate versions. Due to the simplicity of my studio there and lack of tools, I worked primarily from instinct, which led to this unique solution. Then, once back in New York, we photographed the works and printed a handful of them extralarge, which, to me, perfectly reflects Trump’s oversized ego and Trumped-up personality.

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SARAH DILLON Dreamer, 2018 Mixed media 16" × 9" × 4"

Place, as a multifaceted sensibility, can function as a catalyst for artmaking that delves into the depths of self-reflection, social analysis, international issues, politics, and history, and offers up an excellent conceptual basis for creativity as well as for human interaction. For a visual artist, it functions as the backbone of my work as I contemplate time, narrative, change, and ultimately explore what it is to be where I am. The objects in this body of work function as symbolic sentries for social and political outcry locally, nationally, and internationally. They speak to our culture’s inability to accept and assimilate people that are “other” as a part of “us.” Everyone, from those escaping political and social persecution in other countries as refugees or illegal immigrants—trying to come to the US to provide a better life for their families—to citizens who are pushed to the fringes of our society because they cannot afford housing or are unable to work. We 200

ignore homeless encampments on our streets, crossing so as not to bring attention to ourselves. “Sweeping” them away in grandiose gestures of city cleanup. Our country places foreign children in internment camps, separating them from their parents with no plan for reunification. Our culture places labels so we can feel justified in setting them aside. Somehow this makes us safer. I had to stop making pretty pictures for a while this past year when the political ethics and morality of my childhood seem to be eroding in the society I live in today. Artists have a responsibility to our culture to reflect and question it. Especially now. This body of work is a rough response. The subject is rough. The solution is abstract.

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SAREY RUDEN A Very Stable Genius, 2018 Digital illustration/print

The Art of Online Dating: Sareytales are original designs and illustrations inspired by the real messages I have received while enduring the online-dating experience. In 2016, I began combining my passion for art and design with my portfolio of online dating fiascos, transforming the creepy, cruel, and truly bizarre text messages sent my way into humorous and often erotic works of art. As it so happened, the conception of Sareytales coincided with the election of Mr. Trump. And since 45 became POTUS, politics have become an omnipresent undertone to many of the messages I receive on dating sites. This could turn

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into a very interesting social experiment: The more chaotic and polarizing our country becomes, so too do the messages I receive. This presidency is toxic, and its toxicity is poisoning the veins of our country. As an artist and graphic designer, and as a single woman navigating the online-dating landscape, creating Sareytales has evolved into more than a hobby for me. It has become a platform to help empower others to stand up to online bullying and the cyber-sexual harassment culture of online-dating. Sareytales is turning ugly into art, one text message at a time.

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SHANTELLE L. FULLER OPPOSITE TOP

OPPOSITE BOTTOM

Hope, 2018 Digital photography 18" × 24"

Border Terror, 2018 Digital photography 18" × 24"

"If I can depict a world with no reservations, turmoil, nor strife...I would. But since that world does not exist, I will shine light on the essential beauty in the struggle"

There is beauty in just being you and expressing the depth that makes up all of humanity. I would say that this found adornment is within the clothing, clichés, social statutes, or inner circles that we all take part in; but I would be wrong. Why? Because all of these things will eventually fade or pass over in time. Utilizing bright, spirited hues and moderate to harsh brush strokes, I have the ability to orchestrate the emotion and intense thought in my body of work that ranges from contemporary to more abstract and whimsical in aesthetics throughout the process.

UrbanNoir, AKA Shantelle

Viewers are invited to take in the feminine mystique, activism, intuitionism, confidence, and strength that radiate from the depiction of culture as a minority and manifestation.

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S T E FA N I R E Y N O L D S Lost Hope, 2016 Digital photography 10" Ă&#x2014; 8"

As the results of the 2016 Presidential Election became clear and people were ushered out of Hillary Clinton's Election Night event at the Javits Center, many chose to dump their American flags with the garbage that was left behind.

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STEPHEN GEDDES Bat Shit Crazy, 2017 Carved and machined wood, metal 19" Ă&#x2014; 28" Ă&#x2014; 11"

Having worked as a product sculptor in the toy industry, I often find myself using toy-like imagery for politically oriented fine art pieces. This approach seems especially appropriate as a response to a childlike presidency characterized by an almost total lack of self-awareness, responsibility, and impulse control.

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STEVE CUP Very Fine People, 2017 Digital print 8" Ă&#x2014; 10"

In 2017 in Charlottesville, Trump called a group of tiki-torch wielding white supremacists "Very Fine People." As counterprotesters were attacked, he declared there were "Many Sides" to the issue. Since then, many of the alt-right marchers have been identified online. A number of the most violent have been apprehended by law enforcement; others have found themselves removed from jobs and fittingly ostracized from friends and society.

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S T E V E N F E L I X- JA G E R Stranger Oil on wood 18" Ă&#x2014; 24"

We are born into a community. By perceiving our relatedness to all that surrounds, we notice other people and recognize the community from which we come. Our community sets our linguistic parameters of what can be known and how our experiences can be interpreted. It is the communityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history and experience that draw the lines of these parameters. Art can serve as a visionary boundarybreaker, brushing up against what is visible and invisible, enhancing the possibilities of what can be perceived. Art can help us transcend laterally beyond our own (de)limited perception.

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In this painting, I took images from major news outlets and painted them on wood panel. The images presented are of a 2017 Syrian refugee camp. I taped out quoted texts from Jesus and peeled them away after the image was painted. In this way, I juxtapose a narrative (Christian America) onto a reality (Political America). Here we are putting into dialogue two subjects that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not supposed to discuss at the dinner table: religion and politics. This discussion exposes and challenges the effects a community experiences because of current political agendas.

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TOM MONAHAN Liberty Knell, 2018 Acrylic on gallery-wrapped canvas 20" × 20"

Art is an opportunity to express oneself. Freely. Uniquely. It’s one of the true manifestations of individuality. And it’s out there, naked, for the world to see. I embrace that opportunity. I thrive on that challenge.

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WILLIAM DEHOFF Swamp, 2018 Mixed media 30" × 22"

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Americans bought Trump’s “made in China” bill caps along with his promise to “Make America Great Again.” Whether they were “official” merchandise or not, the striking fact was that it didn’t seem to matter. In spite of everything his past history revealed, Trump was believed, supported, and ultimately embraced. Some, including the new Republican Party and corporations, recognized an opportunity to exploit his reckless mendacity. Gullible people, sometimes with understandable grievances, believed him. Others were and are simply deplorable. Perhaps we are what we always have been, but in this new world the worst impulses rather than the highest aspirations have found a home in the Oval Office. A dozen adjectives come to mind for a man who is not worth one. The ideals and reputation of our nation are diminished by a man who dirties anyone he touches.

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ZAC BENSON I’m With You to the End, 2018 Church pew foam, fabric 30" × 18" × 4"

My work serves a purpose. My studio is where I navigate current happenings, personal beliefs, and anthropological perspectives, while allowing myself to concentrate on the ones that grip my attention. I toil over aspects of life and society that are concerning, meaningful, or just overwhelming. One area in society that has gripped my attention is the Syrian refugee crisis. This current piece speaks to the response (or lack thereof) of the church and the United States government. The title speaks to my proclamation that, even if the church and my own government do not help, I will step in the gap and give away my own life jacket.

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