HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US

2017 – 2021

USA / UK / France / Poland

HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US is a live-streamed durational artwork that ran for four years from 20 January 2017 until 20 January 2021. Commencing on the day of the inauguration of the 45th President of the United States, the public was invited to deliver or respond however they wished to the words “HE WILL NOT DIVIDE US”, which were painted above a wall-mounted camera outside the Museum of the Moving Image, New York.

The participatory performance would be live-streamed at www.hewillnotdivide.us continuously for four years, 24 hours a day, for the entire duration of the presidency. In this way, the artwork would act as a show of resistance and insistence, opposition and optimism, guided by the spirit of each individual participant and the community.

The project subsequently moved to the El Rey Theater, Albuquerque on 18 February 2017; an undisclosed location in Tennesee on 8 March 2017, with the project taking the form of a flag; the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool on 22 March 2017; le lieu unique, Nantes on 16 October 2017; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź on 8 June 2018 (in its original format); returning to le lieu unique on 29 October 2018. The artwork concluded on 20 January 2021.

In March 2017, the flag was stolen in a raid by members of the neo-Nazi group, the Traditionalist Worker Party, while being exhibited in Tennessee. Following four years of research and investigations, the artwork was eventually recovered in an operation carried out by the FBI’s specialist Art Crime Team, with the flag returned to the artist shortly after the conclusion of HEWILLNOTDIVIDE.US in April 2021.