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’




AbstractYour 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