OWS 10th Anniversary Deal Toy

A speculative object in the style of a twentieth-century banker’s deal toy: six Occupy Wall Street protesters setting off from the corner of Broadway and Liberty Street, beside Zuccotti Park. Gold under glass, on a marble base cut with the date of Occupy’s tenth anniversary.

Ten years on, income inequality had widened. The work takes the visual language of the deal toy — the desk ornament a bank commissions to mark a deal — and gives it to the movement those deals defeated. It was issued as a digital edition.

The figures come from photo research on the people in and around the park: the hand-painted signs, the accessories, the outfits, the corners they stood on. The form comes from the deal toys themselves, and from working in the graphics department of a real estate investment bank during the 2008 crash.

Modelled with Peter Valkanoff. All proceeds assigned to W.A.G.E., Working Artists and the Greater Economy.