The Los Angeles-based artist has redesigned a billboard to help raise money for the Art for Justice fund, aimed at reducing the rate of incarceration
“What is the purpose of an image?” the artist Mark Bradford asks, questioning the role of photographs and surveillance footage in the pursuit of justice. In our divisive modern landscape, proliferating documentation of violent altercations via iPhone or police body cameras has provided little in the way of absolute truths. Bradford, an internationally acclaimed Los Angeles-based artist whose abstract, sometimes monumental paintings have examined structures of class, race and gender since the 90s, would argue that images of assault and police brutality function as Rorschach tests – they raise questions rather than answers on the appropriate use of force, who is wrong, and who is righteous. “There’s this idea that a camera will protect its citizens because we will look at the imagery and due justice will follow,” he says, “but there are so many ways to interpret truth. That hasn’t been the case.”
Related: Art in action: celebrating a history of social and political artwork
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