A bronze coloured bust by the artists Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider of the whistleblower Edward Snowden, has been unveiled at the Brooklyn Museum. The four-foot, 100-pound bespectacled statue was previously removed by police from a plinth on the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park. Originally it was placed anonymously but the artists revealed themselves when they tried to claim back the sculpture.
“It would be a dishonour to those memorialised here to not laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Snowden has by bringing the National Security Administration’s 4th amendment violating surveillance programmes to light,” the artists said in a statement. The statue was shown at the Postmasters gallery in New York last summer, and is now part of Agitprop!, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (until 7 August).
On April 6, 2015, Jeff Greenspan and Andrew Tider fused a four-foot, 100 pound bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to a pillar within the Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park, a monument to POWs who lost their lives during the American Revolution. They chose this location to draw parallels between those who fought for the ideals America was founded upon, and whistleblowers like Snowden. Mainstream media outlets have long portrayed Snowden as a traitor. One could argue this nation was founded by traitors – rebels who refused to remain loyal to Britain’s tyrannical rule – whom we now consider heroes.