Protest is Beautiful (2007 / 2013)

Protest is Beautiful (2007 / 2013), billboard, postcard, is a Free slogan-sculpture first made in silk flowers produced by a funeral florist in 2007 at the time of the resurgence of protest after the invasion of Iraq in 2005. Since the protests failed to stop the war, subsequent protests were seen by many as destined for the same failure. At the same time every protest was narrated by the media and political leaders as ugly, violent, chaotic, destructive and pointless. Freee used a wreath to represent bot the apparent death of protest and its neglected beauty. Holding the wreath joyfully with friends at the reconstruction site of a building burnt down by rioters in Tottenham in 2011, the slogan challenges the dominant narrative of the Tottenham riot as nothing but the criminal act of defective consumers, an interpretation immediately given to events by Conservative politicians and the media which prominent Left intellectuals uncritically adopted.
Photo by Ben Fitton.