'Enough is enough': an urgent art campaign to help vote Trump out
In 2008, the Los Angeles artist Shepard Fairey created a political poster for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, depicting a graphic portrait of the candidate with the word “Hope”. It would soon become an iconic symbol, signaling a new America, and it gave renewed faith to a nation – and the world.
Ever since, there hasn’t really been a viral political poster that has had the same cultural impact. But that could change as Fairey and a group of artists are fusing forces for Enough of Trump, a new art advocacy campaign that aims to inspire voters for the November election.
Using art as a catalyst for social change, the aim is to get Trump out of office, for one. Second, the focus is to target key swing states, such as Ohio and Minnesota, delivering messages of “Enough” and “Vote”. The posters, made by more than a dozen high-profile artists, will be shown at protests, pasted up on buildings and billboards and projected on to walls, as well as storefronts that have closed during the pandemic.
“Artists have played a leading role in social change movements for centuries,” said participating artist Carrie Mae Weems in a statement. “I add my voice alongside many other artists to say definitively that we reject Trump and all that he stands for. Enough is enough.”
The idea was born out of anger at Trump stoking racial tensions, encouraging violent police tactics, and his glaring failure to address the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’ve reached crisis proportions, I had to do something,” said artist Ed Ruscha, whose art poster reads “EENUF! VOTE” alongside phrases like “Fast Track to Fascism” and “Gateway to White Supremacy” in red lettering.
His poster is being sold as a limitededition print for $2,000 to support the advocacy organization behind Enough of Trump, People for the American Way, which fights rightwing extremism. It was co-founded by the TV producer Norman Lear, congresswoman Barbara Jordan and a group of civil rights leaders in 1981.
Pop artist Deborah Kass, known for her feminist art and colorful neon signage, is part of the project. She has contributed a piece that reads “Enough Already” in pink and yellow.
“Cognitive dissonance is part of what I often do. It looks one way but feels another,” she said. It’s part of her series called “Feel Good Paintings for Feel Bad Times”, created during the Bush administration in 2006. But it feels poignant now.
“I have felt nothing but the deepest despair about the state of America and our democracy since 9 November 2016,” said Kass. “Watching this unfold has been a terrible lesson in exactly ‘How does it happen?’ – the question asked since the second world war and Adolf Hitler’s rise. Enough already indeed.”
Meanwhile, Weems has created a poster of clouds that reads “Remember To Dream”, while Hank Willis Thomas has made a poster that reads “Enough” eight times in various fonts. The repetition is meant to represent what many Americans have experienced first-hand. “The question of the year is: when is enough enough?”
A poster by Latoya Ruby Frazier shows the link between the Trump administration’s gutting of the Clean Air Act and the rising levels of air pollution. Meanwhile, a poster by Amalia Mesa Bains that reads “Basta!” on an
American flag – “That’s enough” in Spanish – is a response to Trump’s “disdain for Latinx people, especially Mexicans”.
Bains said: “I joined this campaign because it embodied the feeling of exhaustion and rage I feel under the Trump administration. The treatment of children in cages at the border, attempts at destabilizing Daca and the public criminalization of Mexican people, who are the backbone of labor in this country, was more than we can tolerate.”
There are two art posters by Fairey, one which reads “Enough Monarchy We Need Democracy!” while another, styled like a Russian constructivist poster, says “Enough Noise and Lies, Gimme Some Truth!”
Fairey has become the poster child for political posters, building on his Obama reputation with his “We The People” protest poster series in 2017, featuring Native Americans, African Americans, Muslims and Latinas, with slogans like “Defend Dignity”.
But there’s much work still to be done. In a 2015 interview, Fairey said that Americans still need to step up and vote. Art could be one way of reaching people. “We need a public that isn’t so uneducated and complacent,” he said. “I hate to say Americans are ignorant and lazy, but a lot of them are ignorant and lazy.”
It echoes what Lear believes to be true – that art could motivate the masses. “I’ve long believed that art can do more than make people think,” he said in a statement. “I’m convinced that the great artists in this campaign will move people to action.”
The Enough of Trump website features a gallery of downloadable images of artworks, alongside links to volunteer and activism opportunities across the country.
It calls to mind the 50 State Initiative, an art project from 2018 that aimed to provoke debate across America by sharing artwork on billboards in every US state, or how the Mexico-US border has become a hub for protest art.
What makes this grassroots initiative different is its sense of urgency, namely, for the looming election. “I really believe that art can be a medium for both social justice and cultural change, and that’s why I’m so glad to be a part of this,” said Frazier in a statement.
“I hope the art we are all creating can move people on a deeper level – and ultimately, move us all to vote!”