Like the news cycles in which we’re living, FAU’s latest “Political Circus” exhibition abounds in muchness. As in past iterations of this election-year compendium, “Political Circus,” which soft-opened Oct. 5 in the Schmidt Center Gallery, displays a dizzying array of campaign propaganda from floor to ceiling, in various gradations of good taste and good humor, of vulgarity and chintziness and cruelty.
From enormous banners to tiny buttons, the merchandise captures an inclusive range of political opinions, some dating back to the 2008 election but the lion’s share covering the issues and personalities defining the 2024 race. Here’s Trump as Rambo, positioned next to Harris as Wonder Woman. Here’s Trump presented as an unctuous Jabba the Hut, next to Harris as a Tarot card (“The Empress”). A flask depicting Donald Trump’s iconic post-assassination-attempt raised fist sits on a stand next to a selection of “Indict Mints” delighting in the former president’s legal troubles. The year’s fringe candidates haven’t been forgotten, either: One bumper sticker supports “Brain Worms 2024.”
Co-curated by Lisa Rockford of Rockford Projects and FAU professor Dr. Jane Caputi from her ongoing collection, and subdivided into categories addressing immigration, race, religion, cults of personality, voting, women’s rights and more, “Political Circus” revels in extremes. It’s like walking through an unfiltered comments section of a political site—subreddits expanded into three dimensions. I found some of the merchandise genuinely witty, particularly a riff on the similarities between Donald Trump and Jim Jones, and a pointed dig at Ron DeSantis’ footwear that flips the script on his anti-LGBTQ stances.
But these are few and far between. There is so much race baiting, ageism, misogyny and dark conspiratorial rabbit holes in “Political Circus” that most rational Americans will recoil at the nastiness that’s put forward in the name of persuasion. There’s a lot here to make the middle—the most un-addressed demographic in the political economy—wince. This is not a criticism of Caputi’s endeavor; far from it. It’s just a sad reflection of how our discourse has been degraded since the halcyon days of “I Like Ike.” All of these items will be preserved in FAU’s collections as a necessary time capsule of our balkanized zeitgeist.
More effective in their messaging, and more reflective of deep and measured thinking, are the original artworks that supplement the aggregated merchandise of “Political Circus.” Sandra Ramos’ “Trumpito Timeline” uses the vernacular of vintage political cartoons to wordlessly illustrate many of Trump’s most incendiary or ludicrous tweets and photo ops. Ramos presents the former president as a Boss Tweedish figure with a moneybag for a head, who hugs an American flag, hawks an upside-down bible, shames the faces of Mount Rushmore, and places an enormous thumb on the scales of a diminished Lady Justice.
Arlene Rush offers up a series of tiny brass sculptures positioned on tasseled pillows—precious trinkets of Trumpism that defined his tenure in office, including a MAGA hat, the Twitter logo, a border wall and a bust of the man himself covered in confetti-like pieces of tattered currency.
I was particularly taken with Adrienne Sloane’s art, which despite appearances does not invite audience participation. In “Missing Pieces: Justice,” the artist created an unfinished puzzle of the U.S. Constitution, with glaring red pieces, bearing the names of unarmed Black individuals killed by police, finding no place in the fractured jigsaw of our founding document. Her “A Delicate Balance” is even more powerful. A Jenga-style tower with blocks such as “Truth,” “Democracy” and “The Constitution,” this construction illustrates the vulnerability of our country’s bedrock concepts: The more of them you remove, the more unsteady our nation becomes until, of course, the entire experiment collapses.
This is the kind of symbolic artwork—playful but profound, and both timeless and frighteningly of-the-moment—that reaches beyond the screaming partisan headlines and T-shirts and decals. In a room full of noise, it finds the signal.
“Political Circus” runs through Nov. 24 at FAU’s Schmidt Center Gallery. Admission is free, but donations are welcome. For information, call 561/297-2661 or visit fau.edu/artsandletters/galleries.
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