Politics
An ‘Alt-Right’ Artist Is Behind a Street Art Campaign Targeting Meryl Streep
The campaign suggests that the actress knew about Harvey Weinstein's abuses. The LA artist behind it says it's revenge for Streep speaking out against Trump.
The campaign suggests that the actress knew about Harvey Weinstein's abuses. The LA artist behind it says it's revenge for Streep speaking out against Trump.
Eileen Kinsella ShareShare This Article
A right-wing street artist who goes by the name Sabo has claimed responsibility for a campaign targeting actress Meryl Streep. The campaign features posters showing a beaming actress next to Harvey Weinstein but with a Barbara Kruger-style red banner across her eyes stating: “She knew.”
The 20-by-28-inch archival giclee prints are for sale on the website unsavoryagents.com for $25 each. artnet News did not receive an immediate reply to an email sent to Sabo though the website this morning. A Los Angeles-based artist, Sabo has sometimes been referred to as the “alt-right Banksy.”
The words “She knew” in the posters are intended to suggest that Streep had knowledge of the disgraced movie mogul’s history of alleged sexual assaults. Sabo, who The Guardian says is 49, told the newspaper on Wednesday that he conceived the campaign with two collaborators—they are not named in the report—as retaliation for Streep using her most recent film, The Post, to criticize Donald Trump. “She’s swiping at us so we’re swiping back,” Sabo told The Guardian.
The posters began showing up on Tuesday in Los Angeles, including near Streep’s house, as well as the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’s headquarters, and the studio lot of 20th Century Fox, according to the report.
Sabo says Republicans are the new punks (one image on his site shows a shirtless, heavily tattoed Ted Cruz with a cigarette dangling from his mouth). The artist makes a living selling artwork both through his website and at conservative events.
Sabo tells The Guardian that he does not know for sure if Streep was aware of Weinstein’s actions, but he has his suspicions: “I wasn’t sitting in a room with her. I can’t say 100 percent. But I’d say anyone in the industry had a pretty good idea. I think she knew. Maybe she was providing Weinstein with the fresh meat.”
Sabo isn’t the only one to target Streep in the wake of the Weinstein allegations. In a now-deleted tweet, actress Rose McGowan also took aim at the three-time Oscar winner: “Actresses, like Meryl Streep, who happily worked for The Pig Monster, are wearing black @goldenglobes in a silent protest. YOUR SILENCE is THE problem. You’ll accept a fake award breathlessly & affect no real change. I despise your hypocrisy.” McGowan, who has been at the center of the “Me Too” conversation, claims that Weinstein raped her in the ’90s. Weinstein has denied all allegations of nonconsensual sex.
Streep responded to McGowan’s accusation with a statement to CNN, saying that she was not “deliberately silent,” just unaware of Weinstein’s alleged assaults. According to CNN, Streep said, “It hurt to be attacked by Rose McGowan in banner headlines this weekend, but I want to let her know I did not know about Weinstein’s crimes, not in the ’90s when he attacked her, or through subsequent decades when he proceeded to attack others.”
On his site, Sabo says that when George W. Bush was elected president, “the claws came out in Hollywood. . . There was no place I could go where I wasn’t punched in the face by some sort of art defining who I was for being a Republican… My aim as an artist is to be as dirty, ground level, and mean as any Liberal artist out there, more so if I can.”