(Photo by Robin Bell)

D.C. artist Robin Bell beamed images of Attorney General Jeff Sessions dressed in KKK garb onto the Department of Justice building last night. A variant of Sessions’ own words was projected alongside: “I thought the KKK was ok until I learned they smoked pot.”

The projection also cycled through a series of other images, with #sessionsmustgo and #firesessions accompanying a deeply creepy photo of Sessions blinking over black eyes, as well as a jail cell with the statistic that “1/3 of black males can’t vote because of the war on drugs.” After more than half an hour, Bell and crew turned the projector across the street to the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover Building with the note #weneedtoseethememo and some more Grade A trolling images.

“We’re constantly trying to figure out what kind of messages to do,” Bell told DCist recently. “There’s just so much to work with.”

Bell’s latest protest art comes just a few days after making national headlines for projecting “Pay Trump Bribes Here,” “Emoluments Welcome,” and the entirety of the emoluments clause over the entrance to the Trump International Hotel.

“We try to take issues that are really not clear cut in a visual example, and try to make it accessible,” Bell says.

While the world took widespread notice of that particular projection, it was actually Bell’s fifth time shining protest art onto the Trump hotel. Back in November, he lit up the hotel’s facade with the words ‘Experts Agree: Trump Is A Pig’ (a reference to the late 1980s campaign by the activist group Positive Force declaring the same of Reagan’s attorney general, Edwin Meese). And he has a long history of activist protest projections (and other film work) around D.C., from the poop emojis on a new Subway building in Mount Pleasant to illuminations in support of abortion rights on the Supreme Court building.

“One of the things about the projections is it brings people together on the street if they see them,” Bell says. “It’s great that it’s being talked about and that people are enjoying the moment, talking about these issues.”

After all the attention from Monday night’s emoluments images at the Trump hotel, Bell announced that a number of people had asked how they could support his work. He’s set up Patreon and Paypal accounts to that end.

A video of Thursday’s projections show them up for about half an hour on the Department of Justice building and another 20 minutes on the hulking FBI building across the street. At one point a trolley full of tourists pass by. Quips one member of Bell’s crew: “Not every tour gets this!”


Previously:
‘Pay Trump Bribes Here’ Projected Onto The Trump Hotel
‘Experts Agree: Trump Is A Pig’ Projected On Trump Hotel

Filed Under: jeff sessions, projections, protest, protest art, robin bell,