"Democracy is Dying" - (formerly America the Beautiful)
Winter 2026 - clandestine projection/ephemeral mural – Hirshhorn Museum, National Mall, Washington, DC
Written on 2.7.2026
“Democracy is Dying”, is an ephemeral protest mural/clandestine projection, as fleeting and delicate as democracy itself, and fittingly inspired by "Democracy Dies in Darkness", the official slogan of moribund The Washington Post, adopted in February 2017 to emphasize the necessity of a free press in ensuring government accountability, particularly following the inauguration of President Donald Trump. A warning that we clearly did not heed to.
“Democracy is Dying” is the last of 4 public artworks that together create “The Climate of Future Past” project that I started last year in response to my commission as the 2025 Washington Post Opinions “Four Seasons” Artist. Given the times, fittingly and forcibly, the project morphed from centering on climate risks to becoming a barometer for the state of our democracy and freedoms.
“Democracy is Dying”, is an ephemeral protest mural/clandestine projection, as fleeting and delicate as democracy itself, and fittingly inspired by "Democracy Dies in Darkness", the official slogan of moribund The Washington Post, adopted in February 2017 to emphasize the necessity of a free press in ensuring government accountability, particularly following the inauguration of President Donald Trump. A warning that we clearly did not heed to.
“Democracy is Dying” is the last of 4 public artworks that together create “The Climate of Future Past” project that I started last year in response to my commission as the 2025 Washington Post Opinions “Four Seasons” Artist. Given the times, fittingly and forcibly, the project morphed from centering on climate risks to becoming a barometer for the state of our democracy and freedoms.
The commission with the Washington Post was abruptly cancelled in September 2025 halfway through by the newspaper's new Opinion's editor during the first wave of firings at the Post that resulted from Trump’s pressures on Bezos to change the newspaper’s editorial direction (little did we know that they meant to just destroy the newspaper altogether!). When the news reached me, I (was rightly pissed and) resolved to finish the last 2 remaining public artworks and “The Climate of Future Past” project anyway without the newspaper’s support. In my mind, not to finish the work would be akin to empowering the censors and censorship.
Above a visual timeline of the evolution of The Climate of Future Past project and the institutional cancellations
|
The decision to complete this massive public art project without the institutional support it was designed around meant having to make some hard decisions and changes to the project.
For the third mural, I called on volunteers and local community organizations and finished “A River Runs Through It”, in Southwest DC, in the span of a couple of weeks. Finishing the 4th and final work of the series was more challenging and required some radical changes to the initial concept. Originally, the final mural was to be a very large temporary climate wall painting titled "America the Beautiful" INSIDE the (Smithsonian) Hirshhorn Museum (just a few buildings away from the White House). "America the Beautiful" was to be based on NOAA's map* of climate disasters occurred in the USA in 2024 - an extraordinarily year for climate disasters (see more details about the initial concept below). Unfortunately, in November 2025, only a month away from the start of the mural, the Hirshhorn Museum pulled its support for the project amid a general wave of pressure from the Trump administration to cancel any exhibition to do with Climate, DEI or anything “woke”. In order to stay true to my resolution of completing "The Climate of Future Past" project regardless of censorship and cancelations, the final artwork had to change and be responsive to the times and climate, and the place... |
Only two years ago, in April of 2023, I was part of a panel at the Hirshhorn Museum discussing the - declining - state of democracy
|
“Democracy is Dying” is my (solution and) response to that cancellations and the final capstone to “The Climate of Future Past”
-------------------------------------
"Democracy is Dying" stands in solidarity with the workers who lost their jobs at the Washington Post, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institutions, NGOs and government agencies and with the ones who are left to carry important work in the midst of so much insanity.
------------------------------------
* Incredibly, the NOAA map itself has also been taken down from NOAA's website and effectively cancelled by the government's censorship. A copy can be seen here.
"Democracy is Dying" stands in solidarity with the workers who lost their jobs at the Washington Post, Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institutions, NGOs and government agencies and with the ones who are left to carry important work in the midst of so much insanity.
------------------------------------
* Incredibly, the NOAA map itself has also been taken down from NOAA's website and effectively cancelled by the government's censorship. A copy can be seen here.
"America the Beautiful”
Winter 2025 - Tropical Weather
Winter 2025 - Tropical Weather
"America the Beautiful" (2025) - study
NOAA map of 2024 natural disasters that will be at the base of the "America the Beautiful" mural
|
|
The Hirshhorn Museum is one of several national cultural assets within the floodplain that affects the majority of the National Mall and as such it provides an ideal setting for the fourth and final artwork for "The Climate of Future Past".
|
|
My painting "The Swamp Takes Over" on the Hirshhorn Museum's social media and communication material to publicize the Earth Day 2023 panel "Art for the Earth: Creative Advocacy for the Environment" in which I also participated as a speaker.