Doppelganger politics

British artist and former Tate Prize winner Mark Wallinger's installation "State Britain" confounds the idea of reality and copy, as well as questions the place of political protest in an art context. In it, Wallinger meticulously recreates within the Tate Museum an actual protest display made by activist Brian Haw in London's Parliament Square. I presented his work to my grad students last week and we had a lively discussion on how it raised issues of the "effectiveness" of political messaging in an art context.

Sometime after Wallinger's version was installed, Haw's original display was dismantled and cut down to a smaller size after a new law was enacted by Parliament banning protest displays larger than 10 feet (Haw's was over 100 feet) within a certain distance from the government building. So in essence, Wallinger's work becomes a time capsule of the original, sealing it into a static piece that is ironically protected within the walls of the (government funded) museum under its status as an "art object."