A troupe of artists on Monday apparently snuck into a park in Brooklyn and mounted a bust of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to the top of a war memorial.
“We have updated this monument to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies,” read a statement from the artists given to the website Animal New York.
Animal tagged along with the artists to film and photograph the stunt. The site gave TPM permission to publish two of the photos.
The bust, 4-feet tall and weighing about 100 pounds, was planted on top of one of the four columns surrounding Prison Ship Martyrs Monument in Fort Greene Park. The memorial was built in tribute to Revolutionary War soldiers buried near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
The artists snuck into the park early on Monday morning and fused the hydrocal sculpture to the stone.
On the base of the column, the artists attached the letters, “SNOWDEN.” They named their work, “Prison Ship Martyrs Monument 2.0,” according to Animal.
“There’s a media landscape that has painted him as a criminal,” said one of the artists based in New York. “You need something theatrical and large to counterbalance the Fox News-iness of the texture of the conversation out there.”
At the time of Animal’s report, the bust remained untampered with in Fort Greene Park, though the artists noted that they fully expect their work to be destroyed.
Here is a full shot of the memorial, courtesy of Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork:
