Liar Liar Democracy on Fire Series (2016-2021)

Liar Liar Democracy on Fire: An Effigy of Mein Kampf (2016)

Liar Liar Democracy on Fire: The Art of Survival under Trump (2020)

Liar Liar Democracy on Fire: January 6, 2021 (2021)

This is a series of three altered book sculptures that span the presidency and insurrection of Donald Trump.

Liar Liar Democracy on Fire: An Effigy of Mein Kampf (2016) I was inspired by my ex-partner’s inherited copy of Mein Kampf sitting in my house. His grandfather was in the RAF and compiled it as it was published in English in order to know was he was fighting against. I found the presence of the book to be very disturbing and decided to make an effigy of it as a burning book, referencing the Nazi book burnings of 1933 and as a way of fighting back in a creative way. Some cultural centres have taken back racist books and memorabilia and burned them in protest and I’m fascinated by this as a practice for a positive benefit. I used a copy of Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio in place of Mein Kampf as an effigy.

Liar Liar Democracy on Fire: The Art of Survival under Trump (2020) is about Trump’s catastrophic dealing with COVID as president, using a paperback copy of his Art of Survival to ‘burn’ in protest.

Liar Liar Democracy on Fire: January 6, 2021 (2021) uses a small copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Child’s Garden of Verses, which was produced in response to the January 6 insurrection as a reference to the colonialist and racist fairy tale of little boys going to war against an imagined enemy and the fragility of American democracy built on colonialism.

Liar Liar Democracy on Fire Series (2016-2020) was exhibited as a part of the exhibition ‘A Generosity of Abundance’ at SUM Gallery, with Valérie Walker and myself, from February - April 2022.