NEW YORK — If you’ve been taking public transportation around New York City lately, you may have noticed something unusual at the bus stops.
Instead of ads for the latest exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, new shoe models or upcoming film releases, the display panels are covered in bold protest posters. Instead of commercial pitches, you’ll find slogans like “Immigrants Are Not the Enemy. The Rich Are the Enemy,” scrawled in thick black letters over bright, multicolored backdrops. Others read “NO DEI, NO DOLLARS,” a rebuke of major corporations caving to government pressure to dismantle their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
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These anonymous artistic interventions are a form of guerrilla activism, turning urban advertising spaces into canvases for political dissent. The tactic, known as culture jamming or subvertising (a blend of “subvert” and “advertising”), hijacks commercial formats to deliver anti-establishment messages.
Even veteran political artists have been caught off guard by the sweeping nature of the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties, cultural institutions, and climate initiatives. “We were shocked — really shocked — by how far they were willing to go,” says Natasha Mayers, a Maine-based visual artist and co-founder of the Artists’ Rapid Response Team! (ARRT!), a collective that creates banners and visuals for progressive protests. “Every issue we care about is under assault.”
Canvas to the streets
ARRT!, or the Artists’ Rapid Response Team, meets monthly to collaborate with progressive nonprofits across Maine, producing visually powerful materials for political actions. The group draws on a rich American legacy of socially engaged art, which has surged during times of social crisis.
Mayers herself has built a career at the intersection of art and activism. She’s earned national recognition for her work both in Maine and abroad, including mural projects in schools in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her art consistently focuses on racial, social, and environmental justice. This is why she has ample experience organizing protests, an expertise she is currently pouring into helping organize demonstrations in Whitefield, the small rural town she calls home.
“People who’ve never protested before are showing up,” she explains. “They thank us for putting these events together. It helps them feel like they’re doing something instead of drowning in despair.”
The artistic presence was palpable on April 5, when nationwide demonstrations under the banner “Hands Off” filled streets around the country. In Washington, D.C., one powerful installation aligned 17,000 pairs of children’s shoes down Pennsylvania Avenue — the road connecting the White House and Capitol Hill. Created by the collective Artists Against Apartheid, the piece honored the children reported killed in Gaza over the past 18 months, according to Palestinian officials.
The Trump administration’s steadfast support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes — is one of the several issues that has galvanized many in the art world.
At the same protest, members of The People’s Forum, a New York cultural space, marched with a giant puppet of Trump, his hands stained with blood — an indictment of his role in various humanitarian crises.
“It’s not just that artists are resisting the current administration,” Valentina Di Liscia, news editor at the arts publication Hyperallergic, wrote in an email to La Marea. “More and more, painters, sculptors, musicians, filmmakers, and cultural workers are joining a broader national movement.”
2017: a defining moment
Artists responded immediately when Trump first took office in January 2017. On Inauguration Day, creators and curators staged a strike inspired by a similar protest in 1970, when New York artists shut down galleries and museums in defiance of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. Major institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Arts and Design offered free or pay-what-you-wish admission in solidarity.
“This is America. And we really need to express what we believe,” said Whitney director Adam Weinberg at the time. “It is our role not to let them own what we think of as America, but to express what we believe is America.”
That same year, the renowned environmental artist Christo scrapped a planned installation on public land — land that, under Trump, fell under federal jurisdiction. He called the situation “intolerable.”
Other artists brought Trump directly into their work. New York painter Robert Cenedella unveiled a massive, apocalyptic canvas titled “The End of the World“, featuring an orange-faced Trump wielding a trident at its center.
Conceptual artist Paul Ramírez Jonas staged a performance called Alternative Facts, in which he acted as a public notary and invited members of the public to suggest a lie, which he then certified as truth. Robin Bell, specialized in night projections, lit up government buildings with phrases like “Impeach,” “Arrest the President,” and “Experts Agree: Trump Is a Pig.”
Gallery walls, different rules
Today, politically charged art is harder to find in New York’s galleries. Still, a few recent shows stand out. Brooklyn artist Sadie Benning presented a series of paintings in 2018 that reflected the far-right’s obsession with policing the boundary between natural and artificial, often at the expense of the environment. “At the time I was thinking about climate change — flooding — and the destabilizing reality of the neofascist power structures being enacted by Trump during his first term,” Benning said of her work.
Another recent exhibit featured Clare Kambhu, whose painting Studio Art, I Can Draw a Monster is part of her series The Project of Schooling. “The painting started with a discarded worksheet from a 9th grade lesson I taught in spring of 2016 (during the run up to the election),” Kambhu explained. “We talked about what zombies, vampires and other monsters might connote. The school I worked in was a public high school for recently arrived immigrants. Lots of monstrous drawings of Trump resulted from this lesson.”
Still, overtly political art remains rare in today’s gallery scene compared to previous years. One notable exception came in October 2024, just weeks before the election. At Satellite Gallery, New York artist Brian Andrew Whiteley exhibited Legacy Stone, a mock gravestone bearing Trump’s name, birth year, and the phrase “Make America Hate Again” — a dark twist on the president’s campaign slogan. Topped with a heart in U.S. flag colors, the tombstone conspicuously omits a death date, inviting reflection on Trump’s lasting legacy. Originally conceived of in 2016 and displayed in Central Park, the exposition had to shut down ahead of time after Whiteley received death threats.
“We’re living in a fear-driven society,” Morgan Everhart, a New York-based artist and curator, told La Marea. “There’s been a sharp uptick in people avoiding even saying Trump’s name, including in press releases.” Everhart notes that many gallery artists today are shying away from direct political commentary, turning instead to themes of identity and introspection.
Leaning in
“It’s like people are asking: ‘We can’t believe this election happened. So how do we talk to the people we love? How are we connecting with those around us? How are we taking care of ourselves?’”
One show that resonated deeply with Everhart was Tavares Strachan’s Starless Midnight at Marian Goodman Gallery. The immersive exhibit spotlighted historically marginalized figures and narratives using a wide array of mediums — paint, sound, neon, and marble. Strachan’s work reflects on historical invisibility and builds bridges between art, science, and history, challenging viewers to rethink what they think they know.
“He really captures the two dominant impulses in contemporary art right now,” Everhart reflected. “People are leaning into deep conceptualism and abstraction — but also into the decorative. They’re learning to blend both.”
