During the summer of 2020, in a desperate response to the Black Lives Matter movement as well as the pent-up anger from the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans banded together to call for racial reform. Artists were quick to respond, interpreting their pain and the state of the country into murals, paintings, graffiti, and more. Many artists during this time borrowed symbolism from history to better convey their message to the public. One of the most commonly used symbols was the Statue of Liberty. Motifs from this sculpture have emerged numerous times in 2020 in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, with many artists utilizing a form of détournement, the transformation or recycling of iconic symbols to draw attention to societal issues, usually in a satirical or subversive way.[1] Artists and protesters alike have used Lady Liberty imagery, adding masks, BLM sashes, binds, and more to express their discontent. While some artists use the statue as a call of everlasting hope for a better future, other artists call for reconstructionism. Either way, the use of this iconic symbol is an effective way of delivering a plea for racial equality.
In this essay, I will evaluate two pieces of art that utilize this imagery. First is Nari Ward’s LAZARUS Beacon in Denver, Colorado. This installation is part of his greater exhibition called We the People. In this piece, Ward projects a quote on the side of a building from Emma Lazarus’s sonnet “The New Colossus” (1883),which is written on a plaque in front of the Statue of Liberty.[2] The second piece is Abigail DeVille’s Light of Freedom.[3] This piece is a reimagined interpretation of Lady Liberty’s famed staff in Madison Square Park. While Ward’s LAZARUS Beacon uses the original language from the Statue of Liberty to promote a better future, DeVille’s sculpture is more iconoclastic and demands a future that is different from the past. They both utilize the same blueprint yet adapt it in very different ways. Ward’s piece elucidates his faith in the ideals of the system, while drawing attention to how our contemporary society falls short of those ideals. DeVille, conversely, is not deceived by the shiny, cloying message of the Statue of Liberty and Lazarus’s poem. She knows that its righteousness does not extend to include black and brown people.
Either way, the use of this well-known icon is essential to furthering both artists’ messages. The United States is a country that prides itself on its freedom and opportunity. However, that experience is only available to the white majority. In protest, artists are using the established imagery that makes up the fabric of United States culture and using it against this majority. It must also be understood that the use of the Statue of Liberty in these situations is not happenstance. This statue was one of the first monuments in the United States and has ostensibly been a fixture of freedom ever since its erection. Because of this heightened reputation, the Statue of Liberty can easily be manipulated to reference the idea of liberty and equality in the United States.
The first piece that we will evaluate is Nari Ward’s LAZARUS Beacon. In March 2020, Ward was preparing a retrospective exhibit on his career in Denver when the world shut down. His retrospective titled We the People is a commentary on his life being a black artist in America. After being postponed for months, it was finally set to open mid-July. Although his exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver had been in the development stages since before the BLM movement exploded in the summer of 2020, he decided to add LAZARUS Beacon to properly incorporate the current events.
LAZARUS Beacon is a foreboding digitally projected installation featuring excerpts from activist Emily Lazarus’s poem, “The New Colossus,”which originally appeared on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal. The piece shows individual words from the Lazarus poem illuminated in between the windows on the façade of the Daniels and Fisher Clocktower in Downtown Denver. Ward took the most visceral words from the popular line, “With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.’” From July to September, the words “tired,” “poor,” “huddled,” “yearning,” “wretched,” “refuse,” “homeless,” and “tempest-tost” were prominently projected on this building.[4] Although the entire Lazarus poem is not well-known in the public consciousness, the one line above has appeared countless times in popular culture, dating as far back to 1950s Broadway in a show titled Miss Liberty.[5] Ward knew that these words had an immediate association for passersby and that they were well integrated into the public consciousness. He clearly wants his pedestrian patrons to internalize those words and then question their authenticity in relation to current events. After four years of a Trump presidency riddled with xenophobia and a summer marked by racial injustices, it is clear that Lady Liberty’s mantra is just a ruse, and he needs everyone to know that.
When talking about his piece, LAZARUS Beacon, Ward stated, “I’m interested in the random nature of the way that viewers will encounter these images. I also like that the work is repositioned into a digital space where the capacity for a larger collective experience is extraordinary.”[6] Ward understands how the masses will react to art that has an element of familiarity. He takes this comfort and subverts it, making the viewer uncomfortable and forcing them to think about their complicit role in structural racism. He is able to change the meaning of these iconic stanzas of Lazarus’s poem to point out racial injustices in the United States, as opposed to celebrating its ostensible inclusivity. Here, he is using détournement and calling his audience to at least pay attention, if not work to make a change. By using these familiar cultural touchstones, he already succeeds at one of the most challenging parts of a public art display: garnering attention. Once Ward makes people feel psychologically safe-due to this familiarity-his true message sinks in and his audience is forced to think about their own complacency in the system.
The success of Ward’s piece, and many other artists’ use of détournement with the Statue of Liberty, can possibly be attributed to the Familiarity Principle (also commonly known as the Mere Exposure effect).[7] Essentially, humans tend to have a preference or liking for things that they have been exposed to more frequently. Even though Ward’s art is not about “liking” or preference-in fact it is quite the opposite-the mere exposure effect also dictates what we give our attention to in an overstimulating environment. The longer Ward can keep his audience’s attention on his piece, hypothetically the more successful the piece would be, because it is begging for the attention of people.
Ward was not the only artist to call on the Statue of Liberty in 2020. One of the most striking new pieces to emerge in New York, an epicenter of the Black Lives Matter movement, was from Abigail DeVille in Madison Square Park. Late summer of 2020, the Madison Square Park Conservancy commissioned a sculpture from DeVille in hopes of reflecting the city’s outrage against racism. Deville created Light of Freedom, a sculpture that is “a response to our history and the present, a reflection of the despair and the exultation of a turbulent period of pandemic and protest.”[8] DeVille’s weighty statue is strongly reminiscent of Lady Liberty’s blazing torch. However, instead of the iconic orange glow in the original torch, DeVille’s sculpture has a flame that is constructed out of hundreds of blue mannequin arms. The structure of the torch is created from fused strips of scrap metal that form a lattice diagonal structure around the blue flame.
The shaft of the torch is hollow, and due to the lattice structure of the metal work, you can see a rusted bell hanging in the middle. The bell, which is suspended by a heavy chain, sways with the wind and seems to remind the audience that time is officially up. The entire sculpture sits inside of a hulking scaffold structure. However, in stark contrast to the rusty, brown colored metal work on the rest of the piece, the scaffolding is an iridescent gold color that shimmers when the light hits it. In DeVille’s artist statement she says the gold is intended to “summon the glory of labor and the luminosity in the struggle that can lead to change.”[9] The finishing touch on the piece is an excerpt from Frederick Douglass’s “West India Emancipation” speech from 1857.[10] The quote is engraved on a metal plate in front of the statue. This is intended to mimic Emma Lazarus’s poem that accompanies the Statue of Liberty.
This piece is ripe in symbolism and full of important imagery that furthers DeVille’s message. The choice to mimic the Statue of Liberty is itself a powerful statement. The Statue of Liberty has been used for over 150 years as a symbol of prosperity and freedom for Americans. Here, just like Ward, DeVille uses it to show that racism is still a huge issue in the United States, despite what the original sculpture claims. The most haunting element of this piece is surely the amalgam of limbs acting as the flame of the torch. All of the arms are stretched upwards as if reaching for the freedom and equality that they cannot quite grab. In the Frederick Douglass quote that adorns the statue, there is a line that states, “They want the ocean without the awful war of its many waters.”[11] DeVille says this imagery helped her contextualize what happened in the summer of 2020. The rolling waves of the ocean are analogous to the waves of people that fought for their rights in the face of death, both due to the pandemic and the police brutality. The iron pieces, melded seemingly haphazardly together, create a cage-like lattice that furthers the dichotomy between freedom and bondage – whether through slavery or the unjust prison system. As a sculptor, DeVille is able to capture the generational struggle of BIPOC people in America as well as the complacency of non-marginalized people. DeVille uses this iconic Lady Liberty imagery to point out that the United States is not “the land of the free” for everyone.
Even though both Ward and DeVille’s pieces are strong in terms of their physical being, it is also necessary to think about their exposure when evaluating their efficacy for promoting change in their communities and in the United States at large. First, the location of DeVille’s piece is poetic in itself. For three years in the 1870’s the original Statue of Liberty’s torch was on display in Madison Square Park.[12] DeVille’s piece deals heavily with the relationship between the past, present, and future. The tethered history of both the public park and the original sculpture furthers the connection between this piece and the past.
On top of its historical relevance, this park is one of the busiest locations in New York. The Madison Square Park website claims that in 2018, the park had an average of 60,000 visitors a day.[13] Although the pandemic surely curtailed that number, the sculpture’s exposure to foot traffic during its almost four-month residency in the park meant that millions of people saw it before it began touring around the rest of the United States. Looking at LAZARUS Beacon, there is certainly a similar effect. The Daniels and Fisher Clocktower is one of the most well-known buildings in Denver and is located at a pedestrian hub. Ward clearly knew to capitalize off of the high level of foot traffic at this location.
Because both pieces use a familiar symbol, the staff of Lady Liberty, they become very effective for a high traffic pedestrian location. As people are walking by, they will easily recognize the contours of DeVille’s statue or the words of Ward’s projection and be reminded of the Statue of Liberty. This automatic connection means they will not have to form their own assumptions or interpretations about the work because the warped representation of a symbol of “freedom” explains it for the audience already. Overall, DeVille’s Light of Freedom and Ward’s LAZARUS Beacon are both successful as art pieces and as a call for action to the masses, proving that manipulation of canonical symbolism is highly effective in activist art.
Activist art in 2020 called on America’s past to highlight its hypocrisy, racism, and structural inconsistencies. TheStatue of Liberty served as a poignant icon to recycle in art this year. By using a symbol that is so widely known, artists can benefit from the collective consciousness’ preconceived ideas and the familiarity principle. Nari Ward knows his striking visuals combined with familiar language will cause Denver residents to take a moment and look up. As for Abigail Deville, she understands that New York City pedestrians will have no choice but to pass her art and reflect on what the word “liberty” really means and whether or not it is accessible to all. Their use of détournement is highly effective at garnering attention for their pieces and getting their points across in a cogent way.
Sources:
[1] Keener, Katherine. “Where Activism and Art Intersect.” Art Critique, 12 June 2020, www.art-critique.com/en/2020/06/activism-and-art/.
[2] Rinaldi, Ray Mark, et al. “‘We the People’: At the MCA, Artist Nari Ward’s Material Truths.” The Know, 10 July 2020, theknow.denverpost.com/2020/07/12/we-the-people-nari-ward-mca-denver/241753/.
[3] “Abigail DeVille ‘Light of Freedom.’” Madison Square Park Conservancy, 3 Feb. 2021, www.madisonsquarepark.org/mad-sq-art/abigail-devilles-light-freedom.
[4] Rinaldi, Ray Mark, et al. “‘We the People’: At the MCA, Artist Nari Ward’s Material Truths.” The Know, 10 July 2020, theknow.denverpost.com/2020/07/12/we-the-people-nari-ward-mca-denver/241753/.
[5] “Lazarus’s Poem.” Lazarus’s Poem, 2018, xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/LIBERTY/lazarus.html.
[6] Ibid
[7] Zajonc, Robert B. “Mere Exposure: A Gateway to the Subliminal.” The Construction of Preference, pp. 464–470., doi:10.1017/cbo9780511618031.026.
[8] Abigail DeVille ‘Light of Freedom.’” Madison Square Park Conservancy, 3 Feb. 2021, www.madisonsquarepark.org/mad-sq-art/abigail-devilles-light-freedom.
[9] Ibid
[11] Abigail DeVille ‘Light of Freedom.’” Madison Square Park Conservancy, 3 Feb. 2021, www.madisonsquarepark.org/mad-sq-art/abigail-devilles-light-freedom.
[12] Carrigan, Margaret. “Art World Workers Join Protests against Injustice in New York-and Aim to Change Racist Systems in the Culture Sphere.” The Art Newspaper, The Art Newspaper, 2 Nov. 2020, www.theartnewspaper.com/news/art-world-protests-new-york.
[13] “About the Park.” Madison Square Park Conservancy, 6 Apr. 2021, madisonsquarepark.org/park/about-the-park/.