Ahead of the 2018 Academy Awards, two street artists want Hollywood to remember its recent dark past.
Amid rumors that the #MeToo movement is losing steam, the artists erected an explicit statue of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein, painted gold, holding an Oscar, and sitting on a casting couch. It’s located at Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, just a six-minute walk from the Dolby Theatre.
The message from Joshua “Ginger” Monroe, famous for his “Naked Trump” statues, and Los Angeles street artist Plastic Jesus is impossible to miss.
“For many years the exploitation of many hopefuls and established names in the industry was brushed under the carpet with their complaints of harassment and sexual abuse being ignored or worse,” Plastic Jesus told the Hollywood Reporter.
A robe-swaddled Harvey Weinstein statue appears in Hollywood days before #Oscars https://t.co/oKGj7aT4st pic.twitter.com/2UNzLvhrHu
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) March 1, 2018
The statue took two months to produce and serves as a grim reminder that Hollywood’s most powerful figures have been historically complicit in the systemic repression of women.
H/T the Hollywood Reporter