One month before the Presidential election, community radio station Radio Free Brooklyn will display a massive mural titled “Wall of Lies,” encompassing over 20,000 mistruths told by Donald Trump since he first took office.
The 50 foot by 10 foot outdoor mural includes tens of thousands of lies that have been fact checked by The Washington Post, and will be on display on Grattan St from 12 p.m on Oct 3rd until 7p.m on October 4th.
In addition to the visual art project, Radio Free Brooklyn will host a voter registration drive and a live broadcast on October 4, from 3-6 pm, in which members of the public will be invited to read some of Trump’s most shocking lies.
“The original idea of the project was for a radio marathon, 24/7 on-air reading of all of Trumps’ lies on Radio Free Brooklyn for a full week before the election,” said Radio Free Brooklyn Executive Director Tom Tenney.
But once the pandemic hit and the community radio station went remote, the idea transformed into a visual art display at the suggestion of Bushwick artist Phil Buehler.
“It was just too good an idea not to happen somehow,” Buehler said. “since I’ve been making large-scale panoramic photographs of political events, a gigantic mural of all the lies seemed the perfect match to Tom’s original idea.
Buehler, a Bushwick based photographer with a bi-weekly photo column in Bushwick Daily titled, “Art or Garbage: A Decade in Bushwick,” described the project as a chaotic metaphor for Trump’s presidency.
“Seen from a distance, it looks like chaos – perhaps an apt metaphor for this presidency, but when you step closer, you can read the individual lies, which are in chronological order color-coded by categories like coronavirus, Russia, immigration, the environment and jobs. Then when you step back, you can recognize patterns in Trump’s lying,” he said.
Next to the mural, a voter registration booth will be set up courtesy of Heather Rush, the owner of Pine Box Rock Shop, and grassroots voting activists, Rep Your Block.
“The countdown to Election Day is underway and Americans are already beginning to vote across the nation, in this time where misinformation is rampant, we feel it’s vital to use our voice to call out these untruths in a visually-provoking way,” said Tenney.
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