YOUR FREEDOM IS FOR-PROFIT

THE VISUAL LANGUAGE OF THE AMERICAN INTERSTATE

Jack Chen, b. 2001 New York
Acrylic on Wooden Billboard

Your Freedom is For-Profit is a critique of individualism in America, and its subsequent social issues that are intrinsically bound with American car culture. It specifically explores the American ideal of “freedom” as an illusion, and how the American landscape and auto centric infrastructure upholds the negative effects of late stage capitalism on American society, like wealth inequality, climate change, and systemic racism. The criticism lies in an analysis of signs and billboards along American roads and highways: they create distance between information and experience, as evident in strip malls and parking lots, and they force drivers to follow a standardized interstate system under the constant surveillance of law enforcement and advertisements. The physical installation of Your Freedom is For-Profit employs the billboard as a medium to provoke viewers in the space it disrupts, and carries a message demanding change.