YOUR FREEDOM IS FOR-PROFIT

Art Installation
2023
Jersey City

Your Freedom is For-Profit: The Visual Language of the American Interstate
Acrylic on Wooden Billboard
24’x 8’x 3’

Abstract

Your Freedom is For-Profit is a critique of individualism in America, and its subsequent social issues that are intrinsically bound with American car culture. It specifically explores the American ideal of “freedom” as an illusion, and how the American landscape and auto centric infrastructure upholds the negative effects of late stage capitalism on American society, like wealth inequality, climate change, and systemic racism. The criticism lies in an analysis of signs and billboards along American roads and highways: they create distance between information and experience, as evident in strip malls and parking lots, and they force drivers to follow a standardized interstate system under the constant surveillance of law enforcement and advertisements. The physical installation of Your Freedom is For-Profit employs the billboard as a medium to provoke viewers in the space it disrupts, and carries a message demanding change.

Read the full essay here.

Back side: “Equality feels like oppression when you are accustomed to privilege”

Front side: “You are going the wrong way”

Front side: “You are going the wrong way”

Exhibition visitors

Jack Chen with installation

Promotional Posters

Promotional Poster (A)
Digital & Print

Promotional Poster (B)
Digital & Print

Process Documentation

Lettering

Billboard painting

Billboard construction

Box truck

Final gallery delivery

Panel priming

Primer prep

Panel scale

Connecting pieces

Panel construction

Initial panel design

Gathering materials