There’s a Fake Donald Trump Tombstone in Central Park and It’s Not Even Good Art. Sad!
Source: thedailybeast.com
It must’ve been made by Lyin’ Ted because even New York City’s most famous guerrilla artists can’t figure out what the hell it means.
A baffling, ornate tombstone bearing Donald Trump’s name was erected in NYC’s Central Park over the weekend. Below an open death date, the inscription on the guerrilla monument read: “Made America Hate Again.”
So who pulled this off? Still, no one seems to know.
I assumed it was the work of Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider, the creative public pranksters who installed a 100 pound bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in a Brooklyn Park last April.
I reached out to Greenspan by phone and he said he absolutely didn’t do it. In fact, he thinks the point of it is a bit too confusing to be a successful piece of guerrilla art.
Any idea who did it?
I have no idea who did the Trump tombstone.
How many people contacted you over last 24 hours asking if you did it?
(Laughing) A couple online publications, a couple dozen friends and maybe another half-dozen random people from Facebook. And, you know, I understand, because it’s sculptural and it’s in the public space and there’s guerrilla tactics involved and a lot of the stuff I’m associated with has those elements too. So I understand how people make the leap and ask if it was me.
I applaud anyone who has a point of view or something they want to say and they use creativity as a way of putting that idea out into the world, especially when it takes as much planning and risk-taking as this project did. I’m sure it cost a lot of money to do. I haven’t seen the piece up close, but from what I read, it’s a real tombstone.
It must have taken a lot of planning and a lot of guts to go off into a high profile public space like Central Park and install it in the way they have. It looks like it’s installed in a very professional way.
That said, it raises a lot of questions for me.
If it’s a tombstone, I’m a little confused as to why there isn’t a death date on it. Is that a call for his death? Is he or she asking us to help get him [Trump] into that grave? And why did they choose Central Park? Did Central Park have some kind of significance other than it’s a high visibility area?
When Andrew Tider and I did the Snowden statue, the place we chose was picked not just because it was public, but because there was a narrative significance to it.
Here with the Donald Trump tombstone in Central Park, I struggle a little bit to figure out what the connection is, but there very well might be one that I’m not seeing right now.
What do you think anti-Trump, guerrilla artists should be doing?
I’m not here to tell anyone what they should do. I’m personally not a fan of Donald Trump, and I think he’s a representative of a wave of anger and hate that exists in this country and I’m also wondering if this particular artist is just calling for a death to that wave of hate.
I think it would be interesting. I’m not saying that artists should do this, but I think it would be interesting if there is some kind of question about death that is asked through art, as to: What happens if and when Donald Trump doesn’t win? What happens to that wave of anger and hatred that has been opened up? Where does that go?
It’s not simply just gonna dissipate. And it’s not gonna be put in a grave somewhere. It’s going to continue to be out in the open now. And how do we address that? And that might be an interesting project for artists, or maybe even me at some point, to ask in a public space.
Source: thedailybeast.com
