Earlier this month, the artist Chris Silva was invited to participate in an event at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the exhibition "Transmission LA," a two-week-long interdisciplinary art jam curated by Mike D of seminal rap group the Beastie Boys. Things did not go as planned, and now the artist is claiming that his work was censored because it upset the show's corporate sponsor, Mercedes-Benz. The specific event Silva was asked to participate in, titled "BYOB" — for "Bring Your Own Beamer" ("beamer" in this instance meaning projector, not BMW) — featured projections by more than 40 artists installed throughout MOCA's Geffen Contemporary space between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. on May 5. However, the artist alleges that his 3D wire model of a 2010 Peugeot race car drew unwanted attention from a "Transmission LA" organizer, who insisted that he remove the work so as not to upset Mercedes representatives.
"I was then told that I had to take down what I was showing and that I could show something else if I had it," Silva told Matt Gleason in an interview published on the Huffington Post. "I was also told that the reason I couldn't show it is because someone from Mercedes corporate was 'pissed' about it and basically took it as a 'fuck you' to Mercedes."
Silva says that after setting up his projector for the event, which he was invited to participate in by curator and new media artist Rafael Rozendaal of the BYOB collective, he returned to find a postcard taped over the lens, blocking the image. "I took the card off," Silva says, "fixed the image back the way it was supposed to and immediately got rushed by Felipe Lima, one of the 'Transmission' organizers and two other people who I did not know, one of them wearing a gold chain with a Mercedes logo hanging from it." When he asked to speak to a Mercedes representative, Silva says that he was told he couldn't because "they are pissed." ARTINFO attempted to contact MOCA regarding this incident, but received no response.
"Is MOCA a car lot?," Silva asked. "Is MOCA a venue for advertisements where the interests of the brand comes before the art? Who empowered them to simply go around and pluck whatever art out of the show to throw in the trash? I made this art on my own dime, traveled down there on my own dime, displayed it on my own time."
The piece in question, "Up a Wall" (2012), is one of several by the Santa Barbara-based artist that incorporate automobile imagery, including one ("Weights," 2011) that even features Mercedes wheels. "Never again," Silva told Gleason. "I don't think the experience is going to change my art making as much as it is going to change my opinion of the materials I work with."
Share This Story