Drawings
The incised text comes from five tweets involving the fantasized death of Barack Obama. Threats against Obama’s life began right after he declared his candidacy in 2007, and the London Telegraph reported in 2009 that “the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush.” Publicized anti-Obama threats come from pro-ISIS Twitter hacks (Newsweek and U.S. Central Command), from hack celebrities (Creed singer Scott Stapp), and from blacks (Donte Sims, Jay Martin, and Christine Wright-Darrisaw). But I feel it’s safe to assume that the bulk of hostility against Obama in the U.S. is found disproportionately among whites, and is simultaneously cut through with explicit expressions and disavowals of racism. The embattled nature of Obama’s presidency should be understood through the lens of tweets such as these, which in turn might lend insight into the administration’s unrelenting focus on secrecy and security. The enigmatic quality of these racist death fantasies is conveyed for me by scratching them on to cardboard, where they simultaneously evoke decay, graffiti, and ancient law.
