The controversial New York artist Andres Serrano has found himself in an unlikely corner of the internet: the darkest auctions of eBay. Ever since he became a fervent bidder for his 2019 exhibition The Game: All Things Trump, collecting 1,000 items of Trump memorabilia in New York, he found a disturbing number of online auctions.
His findings will be displayed at Fotografiska in New York City on 23 October, as part of his new exhibition, Infamous. More than 30 photographs are on view from the 19th century onward, of what the artist calls “America’s infamous past”.
The pieces detail the country’s uncomfortable history with race – from golliwog dolls to racist packaging (“Cotton Picker Corn Whiskey”), dating from 1897, including photos of death camps, swastikas, lynchings and slave receipts (he bought and photographed 50 items in total).
“I looked into artifacts from the past that had some kind of baggage,” explained the artist to the Guardian. “Objects, photographs, things of most interest to me are things considered racist, dehumanizing, degrading, politically incorrect, that goes without saying.”
But why draw attention to such things? “We want to believe what happened in the past stays in the past, history proves us wrong,” said Serrano. “There will always be new victims to attack and marginalize, new scapegoats to replace the old ones, proving that man’s inhumanity to man has no limits – we can choose to look the other way, but it doesn’t make it any better.”
Serrano is no stranger to controversy, even downright outrage. The New York-born artist with a Honduran and Afro-Cuban background came into the spotlight in the 1980s with his controversial artwork Piss Christ, where he photographed a plastic crucifix in a bottle of his own urine.
He hasn’t softened much. Does he acknowledge his shock jock tendencies? “My work is always one photograph, one idea, one photograph to another,” said Serrano. “Sometimes you see the thread, sometimes it isn’t clear, but it’s there.”
Beyond his Bodily Fluids series from 1986 to 1990, he has continued to dissect American society over the past 35 years. From a series of Native Americans to his portraits of the KKK, he caused an uproar with his photographs of feces entitled Shit from 2007.
“People said I just do it for the attention,” he mused. “I thought, what human being in this world does anything and does not want to get some attention or recognition for their work? Everything we do is for attention. We’re just trying to do something good. That’s what I do.”
As for this current series, Serrano says he isn’t appalled by what he found online. “I’m an artist, I’ve seen everything,” he said. “I was surprised there was so much stuff out there, that it’s so outrageous and people sell it on eBay.”
According to Serrano, most of the sellers aren’t apologetic about hawking swastikas and racist memorabilia, although sometimes they’ll write: “I’m only a collector or a seller of this stuff.” But to most? “It doesn’t faze them, they’re just making a dollar,” he said.
The oldest piece in the show is dated from 1822. It’s a slave receipt from Mississippi that details that a young man named Joshua, aged 12, was healthy. “That says it all, it goes on to say the boy is free of any diseases, as far as they know,” said Serrano. “I spent roughly $800 on each object.”
He claims to never worry about the reaction nor response to his artwork. “I never anticipate the reaction,” said Serrano. “Sometimes the reaction is bad, even when it’s supposed to be good – some people bristle when they hear my name, no matter what the work is.
There are pieces that incorporate old American flags – one from 1890, which is propped up like a hood resembling the Ku Klux Klan, another, a ripped-up American flag from the 1920s called Old Glory (its patriotic nickname). “America isn’t what it used to be, but maybe America was never what we thought it was?” he says.
Though this series was created before the killing of George Floyd in May, before the Black Lives Matter protests, murals and street paintings in front of Trump Tower, he sees it as symbolic of the current presidency.
“We can’t say Trump is the only bad person here. America has been turned on its head by Republicans and enablers,” he says. “Everyone who has fought against the rights of black and brown people, women, Mexicans, you name it, everyone who has been victimized by this America, should pay the price for it.”
Serrano, who photographed the Ku Klux Klan in 1990, also bought two KKK hoods online; one in white and another in black. Each color of hood designates different ranks within the organization. Black robes often indicate Knighthawks, a security position within the group. The hoods here are photographed with dramatic lighting and heavy shadows, appearing to have people under them, although nobody is wearing the hoods in each of his photos.
It’s a hot topic, considering an exhibition of the white artist Philip Guston’s paintings of Klansmen, as part of a larger exhibition, has been postponed by the National Gallery. Some critics see it as a cultural crisis in America, though the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has KKK hoods on display.
“I have seen the Klan close up,” said Serrano. “I don’t judge people, especially when I photograph them. I go in there like a doctor, I don’t go in there angry at the disease, I just deal with it.”
Serrano also has a swastika opera box banner from the 1930s, which he has photographed draped over a mannequin, a 1912 postcard of cotton pickers, a photo of a whipping post in Delaware, photos of a Japanese internment camp and actors in blackface in a photo dated from the 1940s, which supposedly was part of a performance for the US air force.
To be clear, the actual items are not going on display, but photos of them. “I’ve always believed the Marcel Duchamp idea that anything is art; I don’t see them as photographs, but pieces,” he says.
The most recent piece in the exhibit is a set of 3D plastic shooting range targets from 1971. “They were actual targets of black men pointing a gun at you, and were used as targets for people working in law enforcement, in rifle clubs, anyone who had a gun and wanted to shoot a black man, that was the target you bought,” said Serrano.
Much of the exhibition, which saw its preview at NeueHouse Hollywood last month, deals with what the artist calls “black infamy”.
“Some could say it’s ‘work of the moment’, but it’s been around for ages,” said Serrano, who is 70. He is not so sure he has seen much progress. “You think you’d see change due to the protests, angry people, but despite the awareness, black and brown people are still being killed by the police, since the killing of George Floyd.”
“Nothing has changed,” he adds.
