Awol Erizku: Make America Great Again

Make America Great Again marks a departure from LA-based artist Awol Erizku’s photographic work, bringing together new sculptures and paintings as well as a ‘conceptual mix-tape’ produced specifically for the exhibition.

Taking key political symbols and historical iconography whilst sampling from the urban fabric of his surroundings, Erizku combines ‘high-art’ references, such as the notion of the ‘ready-made’, with popular culture.

Central to the exhibition is How That Make You Feel? (2017) a silkscreened American flag with a black panther printed heavily across the stars and stripes. Requiring no translation, the work stems directly from what the artist describes as the current ‘political turmoil’ and the atmosphere of ‘racism and bigotry’ that he feels has aggressively resurfaced in the US.

Through a combination of assemblage and sound, Erizku re-appropriates what can at first appear as mundane. Writing or symbols painted illicitly on a wall in the street become emblems of a political struggle in works such as Wave Brake (2017) and Wish the Worst (2017). Street slang is translated directly onto plywood or corrugated metal in order to preserve the immediacy of such a form of expression. Spray-painted ’12’ numbers, slang for the police, become frighteningly potent when repeated over and over, themselves forming an inescapable part of the environment.