The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project
Interstate 10 Freeway
Fall 2013 – Spring 2015
The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project was a series of artist-produced billboards and activations that unfolded along Interstate 10 Freeway from Florida to California through June 2015.
Using 100 billboards total, 10 artists created “chapters” along I-10, each a unique interpretive link to the exhibition thematic. The billboards moved through and punctuated the landscape by tracing territorial expansion from east to west, along one of the country’s busiest freeways, and concluded in Los Angeles. The billboards were activated through various events, programs, and social media outlets for dialogue and interaction with local communities.
The project was conceived by artist Zoe Crosher and was co-curated by the artist and LAND’s Director and Curator, Shamim M. Momin. Using the concept of Manifest Destiny – America’s territorial expansion across North America – the artists explored this problematic and layered history. Crosher writes, “The intention was to give a physicalized reminder of this extraordinarily influential (and often times destructive) 19th century belief which unabashedly dictated the expansion west, that still dictates our movement west, and to gently place/implicate/remind the people unknowingly participating in that landscape along the way.” Momin adds, “By physically moving through and mapping the very landscape that has been so fantasized, dreamed about, and capitalized upon in a breadth of positive and negative ways, the artists had the opportunity to address their work to the idea in a variety of ways – opaque or direct, tangential or political, macro and micro.”
Artists included John Baldessari, Sanford Biggers, Matthew Brannon, Zoe Crosher, Eve Fowler, Shana Lutker, Jeremy Shaw, Daniel R. Small, Bobbi Woods, and Mario Ybarra Jr.
RECENT PRESS
Must-See Public Artworks Of Summer 2015, Artspace, June 10, 2015
Charles Rappleye, Outside the Cube: LA’s Independent Nonprofits, Artillery Magazine (print), July/August 2015
Mark Ellwood, America’s Best Public Art for Summer 2015, Bloomberg Business, April 6, 2015
Top 5: April 1, 2015, Glasstire, April 1, 2015
Mark Brodie, I-10 Billboards In Tucson Are Actually An Art Installation, KJZZ 91.5, March 20, 2015
Catherine Wagley, A 2,400-Mile Art Exhibit Is About To Hit L.A., LA Weekly, March 5, 2015
Andy Cush, In America, Public Art Is Satanist Muslim Terrorism, Gawker Newsfeed, February 25, 2015
Alicia Eler, Zoe Crosher’s Fantasy Manifests Destiny, Artbound | KCET, February 23, 2015
Greg Allen, The Sign Of Las Cruces, Or How Ya Like Me Now? LAND Edition, Greg.org, February 21, 2015
Catherine Wagley, The L.A. Art We Want to See in 2015, LA Weekly, December 30, 2014
Taylor Browning, Touring Billboard Art Arrives in San Antonio, The Rivard Report, October 1, 2014
Top 5: Sept. 25, 2014, Glasstire, September 25, 2014
Shari Rose, LA Artist to take over 10 Arizona billboards on I-10, AZCentral.com, September 19, 2014
Benjamin Sutton, Artists Hit Highway in Search of New Viewers, Artnet, August 20, 2014
Dawn Chan, All Across America, Artists Are Taking Over Billboards, T Magazine, August 18, 2014
Beth Rankin, Drive-by Art Installed in Beaumont, Beaumont Enterprise, July 14, 2014
Matt Shaw, Drive-By Art: I-10′s Billboard Masterpieces, Architizer, June 30, 2014
Charles Davis, How The Sunset Strip Went To Shit, Vice Magazine, May 7, 2014
Kevin Lee, Space 301 widens artistic focus with latest PRE-GLO exhibition, Lagniappe, April 16, 2014
Lori Zimmer, Expansion West: The Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, Mutual Art, April 2, 2014
On The Road, Chapter 1, Daily Shop Window (blog), February 27, 2014
Kyle Fitzpatrick, Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, Los Angeles I’m Yours, October 18, 2013
Tali Jaffe, Manifest Destiny, Cultured Magazine, October 2013
Maud Doyle, The 2,500-Mile Art Show, Departures, September 2013, p. 169