A screen grab from the installation “The People’s Prison” from Indecline (Photo – Vimeo).
Like a crew of professional operatives in a heist film, seven members of an installation team rented, altered, and photographed a room in the Trump International Hotel in New York.
By Garrett Rowlan
Working overnight, with little sleep, the crew transformed the room to a site worthy of a Trump nightmare—blackened walls, trash, rats and, in a prison cell, a forlorn-looking Trump imposter languishing.
The Installation, by the group Indecline, will return in all its subversive glory, in April, to the Gallery 30 South in Pasadena.
The visitors to the gallery will have a chance to do something that no one outside of the artists themselves did, which is to see the exhibition, inasmuch as it came up and went down overnight. Once photographed, the objects were removed and everything was gone—except for the released rats who, like certain other shady operatives, might have found Trump hospitality conducive to their activities.
Another part of the installation will feature 13 works based on the American flag, but showing revolutionary figures such as philosopher Noam Chomsky, activist Angela Davis, and so forth.
Gallery 30 South curators released a statement to ColoradoBoulevard.net regarding the installation. The following is an excerpt:
With this exhibition, the artist collective known as Indecline choose to target a controversial figure with controversial materials. Gallery 30 South strongly supports the right of free speech, and promotes the concept of an art gallery as a Free Speech Zone.
…The artists who have participated in this exhibition have chosen to celebrate important, historical figures by casting their likenesses onto a canvas that symbolizes, for most Americans, the core values of this country. It is understood that some may take offense to art that is seen to promote dissent or that could be interpreted as a form of flag desecration, but we would be remiss to not point out that there is no constitutional amendment that prevents the use of an American Flag to make a point, be it artistic or otherwise.
As such the gallery supports the rights of artists to exercise free speech even in cases when their point of view opposes our own. These works all have merit that transcends mere aesthetic and the exhibition is conceptually a worthy enterprise likely to encourage the free flow of ideas and opinions that support and oppose that expression. In the current polarized environment, it is our great hope that hosting this exhibition helps to bridge the gap between parties in support of ideals that were so important to our founding fathers that they recorded them first and above all others as basic rights for all.
No set date has been announced yet. The exhibition will take place around mid-April. If you’re interested in attending, you are urged to sign up for notification with the gallery.
Garrett Rowlan’s first novel, “To Die, To Sleep” is newly published and available on Amazon.
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