ATLANTA/WASHINGTON, DC – This month, two of the nation’s largest billboard companies rejected three hard-hitting images, by artists Deborah Kass and Cleon Peterson, created for a digital billboard campaign in partnership with People For the American Way and intended to help deliver a GOTV message to inspire Georgia voters to the polls through Nov. 8.
**View the images here and here**
All People For the American Way Georgia Art Project images are available here: https://www.georgiavotes.art/
The art installations were part of a collaboration with prominent artists and People For’s multi-platform Georgia campaign, which includes radio ads, digital ads, press outreach and social media and focuses on why Republicans Brian Kemp and Herschel Walker are the wrong choices for all of Georgia, especially Black male voters. The purpose of the campaign is to galvanize voters to action around one central theme: vote.
To ensure these pieces are available for public viewing, People For has arranged for mobile billboard trucks to display the rejected images throughout Atlanta and has created an online hub for interested users to access and share the images.
“Art activism plays an important cultural role in expressing the harsh realities that we face in our everyday lives,” said President of People For the American Way Ben Jealous. “This is art censorship. Billboard companies may not want you to see them, but the courageous pieces created by Kass and Peterson offer an undeniable visual of what’s at stake this election and who’s accountable for those actions that are leading America backwards.”
“If this art work offends you, wait to see what happens if you don't vote,” said People For the American Way Executive Director Svante Myrick. “There’s a short line between the intense reactions to the art depictions and the urgency that we carry to the ballot box. Protecting our families, our future, and our democracy can’t wait until the next election. We need everyone’s voice, right now."
“Vote. Your life depends on it,” said Deborah Kass, whose art installation includes the faces of five Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas.
"The personal and political chaos in our world is a direct result of the violence against human beings in the name of power,” said Cleon Peterson, whose art installations depicting White supremacist gun violence, and attacks on reproductive choice, were rejected. “The art for these billboards depicts the rawness and the terror of those struggles and I hope it's enough to move the people of Georgia to action in this midterm election."
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Deborah Kass. Deborah Kass is an artist whose work examines the intersection of art history, popular culture and the self. Her work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Solomon Guggenheim Museum, The Jewish Museum, The Museum of Fine Art, Boston, The Cincinnati Museum, The New Orleans Museum, The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institute, Fogg/ Harvard Museum, as well as other museums and private collections.
Kass’s work has been shown nationally and internationally including at the Venice Biennale, the Istanbul Biennale, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne. The Andy Warhol Museum presented "Deborah Kass, Before and Happily Ever After, Mid- Career Retrospective” in 2012, with a catalogue published by Rizzoli. Her monumental sculpture OY/YO became an instant icon and is now permanently installed in front of the Brooklyn Museum and the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
Cleon Peterson. Cleon Peterson is an LA-based artist whose chaotic and violent paintings depict the struggle between power and submission in the fluctuating architecture of contemporary society. Born in Seattle, WA, in 1973, Peterson received his MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit, MI, and his BFA in Graphic Design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Peterson’s work has been included in major exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; at the Musée des Abattoirs, Toulouse; and at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He has had solo exhibitions at Albertz Benda, New York, Over the Influence, Los Angeles; Agnès b.’s Galerie du Jour, Paris; Pilevneli, Istanbul; and PLUS-ONE, Antwerp.
His category-defying work has illustrated features in the New York Times, fiction by George Saunders in the New Yorker, and Penguin Classics’ edition of Philip K. Dick’s ‘Man in the High Castle.’ In 2020 he released a series of instrumental political posters disseminated through his website.
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About People For the American Way
People For the American Way is a progressive advocacy organization founded to fight right-wing extremism and build a democratic society that implements the ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for all. We encourage civic participation, defend fundamental rights, and fight to dismantle systemic barriers to equitable opportunity. Learn more: https://www.pfaw.org.