On Nov. 6, the day after the presidential election, the artist Hank Willis Thomas was at his studio in Brooklyn. His production assistants were poring over tables strewed with blobby red white and blue silk-screen prints of the words “Fragile/ Democracy / Handle With Care” in capital letters.
In response to shootings across the United States, and in sympathy with students’ demands for more gun control, artist Jenny Holzer wrote text that animates issues of the firearms industry and gun violence. Her hyperactive black-and-white writing flashed on mobile LED screens, with text popping in quick succession like free-association poetry, and sometimes in the awful rapid-fire of semi-automatic weapons.
At the end of 2005, Liu Boln was living in Beijing and working as an artist’s assistant. Beijing’s art world at this time was thriving. On November 16, 2006 when Suo Jia Cun was forcibly demolished, Liu decided to use his works to make a stand against this atrocity. He wanted to show the state of artists in society, that their living and working places had not been protected.
