IS FREEDOM FREE?

Free Speech
VS
Hate Speech

This billboard project has been a major catalyst for public debate in the United States about the potential and scope of artistic expression to engage with Trump’s new political order and the global rise of right wing populism. The project has been widely featured in the local as well as national media and thousands of people have seen the billboard in situ. By satirizing Donald Trump in a collage of memorable images that comment directly on his dangerous authoritarian and fascist tendencies, the project has provoked not only wide public debate but also the threat of censorship.

Attempts to censor the project have been asserted in the form of physical threats directed at me, the artist, and in the misguided use of copyright restrictions by third party rights’ holders of the content used in the billboard to try to prevent me from continuing to publicly display the billboard or at least in the form originally conceived. Like any controversial public artwork, the public’s response (including censorship threats) has become an on-going part of the project which now will take form as a documentary on the subject of Hate Speech VS Free Speech. This website is devoted to raising awareness about this project and this issue facing our nation.