ON THE EDGE of a new world, pilgrims engage in outrage porn.
Marlene McCarty and Donald Moffett are artists who live and work in New York.
For more, read the December issue of Artforum: “The Year in Shock”—critics reflect on the upheaval of political and perceptual experience as we know it.
I MADE THIS right before the election. It still applies.
Jack Pierson is an artist who lives and works in New York.
For our special focus on art and politics in the November 2016 issue of Artforum, subscribe or read online at artforum.com.
WE KEEP GETTING CALLS AND EMAILS AT THE OFFICE, TELLING US “IT’S COMPLICATED.” They say we don’t “understand them.” Be “reasonable” they say. The more ambitious ones go on to explain that while there were definitely voters who acted on racist, misogynist, and xenophobic instincts, most voted simply out of the sense that their economic hardships were being ignored.
This is when we hang up. Or turn on the vacation responder. (Paul told us to.) If we could engage, we’d tell them that they’re right, and that’s why they’re wrong. They’re right that many voted for Trump because they believe he spoke
USA IS AN IMAGE I made in in 2003. It was part of the series “Dead Democracy Letters,” 2002–2006. When artforum.com suggested running something from the series it was hard to know which one to choose. Should it be Landscape Incarceration, RAW WAR, The Folding Up, The Doom—so many terrible options to choose from. When I made this image, it was prompted by an article I had read about detainees at Guantanamo Bay, particularly the children that were detained and how they were requesting books about the sea, given that they were on an island in Cuba surrounded by water, a different “scenery” from
In the wake of the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, artists and activists have begun to respond—and prepare for future interventions.
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE ELECTION I wrote and performed the following text, as a response to Zoe Leonard’s I want a president project on the High Line in New York City. My feelings haven’t changed much since then, although they are perhaps more palpable in daily interactions. As I’m traveling outside the US right now, a lot of people ask about Trump. Rather than respond to that question, I’d rather continue to talk about the things that mattered
In the wake of the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, artists and activists have begun to respond—and prepare for future interventions.
BEFORE ELECTION DAY I performed as Donald Trump in the hope that I could retire this persona after November 9. No such luck!
Martha Wilson is an artist who lives and works in New York.
For our special focus on art and politics in the November 2016 issue of Artforum, subscribe or read online at artforum.com.
THERE’S A PILE of dirty laundry on my floor, not really. Inside me grievances mount, grief, anger fulminates, ugliness. Feel palpable anxiety for the most vulnerable people, they’re without, without, without resources. Despair for terrors his bullying campaign brought, his election, causing black and Hispanic kids, and gay kids, not to be able to sleep, to fear being killed. Desperate refugees, immigrants. Girls who will get their first period, naive, vulnerable, no protection for them. Gorge rises at the bigots, cleared to come out from their half-shut closets. In this long, dark night, vampires
In the wake of the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, artists and activists have begun to respond—and prepare for future interventions.
THERE IS NO CONCESSION, but a renewed search to find means to embolden the process of struggle, resistance, and critique, active before this election.
Our empire was already weakened by our policies, decades of endless war and injustice, against the most unfortunate, buried in our laws that shackled emancipation.
We must now heed the will of those unaware they have been suffocating on the spittle of their anger.
We must be ready soon to
FRANKLY THIS IS A MOURNFUL LITTLE PIECE. Last Sunday we were all out there on the high line freezing our asses off—joyfully. Zoe Leonard’s I Want a Dyke President was wheat-pasted several hundred feet away from us and for about three hours ten or twelve of us including Justin Vivian Bond and myself and Layli Long Soldier and Fred Moten, poets & performers, thinkers, everyone emceed by Sharon Hayes read statements got up on stage and sang and read about sex and chatted and discoursed and generally filled in the details of the absolute political state of rage we are living in. It was beautiful
In the wake of the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, artists and activists have begun to respond—and prepare for future interventions. Here James Welling shares photographs from a Union Square rally and march on Trump’s home, Trump Towers at 725 Fifth Avenue in New York, on November 9 and another on November 11, 2016.
For our special focus on art and politics in the November 2016 issue of Artforum, subscribe or read online at artforum.com.
To coincide with the November issue of Artforum on art and politics, including special projects by Wolfgang Tillmans, Dread Scott, and Eileen Myles, artforum.com invited a small group to select an indelible image or video related to the election.
"His Bonnie on the side, Bonnie on the side
Makes me so sad, girl
His money on the side, money on the side
Makes me so sad, girl.
I'm a sad girl, I'm a sad girl, I'm a sad girl”
– Lana del Rey
Christopher K. Ho is an artist living and working in New York and Hong Kong.
For our special focus on art and politics in the November 2016 issue of Artforum, subscribe
To coincide with the November issue of Artforum on art and politics, including special projects by Wolfgang Tillmans, Dread Scott, and Eileen Myles, artforum.com invited a small group to select an indelible image or video related to the election.
Judy Chicago is an artist, author, and educator.
For our special focus on art and politics in the November 2016 issue of Artforum, subscribe or read online at artforum.com.