Parodying Renato Bertelli's 1933 bust, Profilo Continuo (Testa di Mussolini), Profilo Continuo (Testa d'il Dunce) draws parallels between the namesake of Bertelli's original bust with the current American president-elect. A projected light results in a revelatory cast shadow; an intervention which clarifies the sculptural subject, and places the work within a temporal frame. Through this, audience members are invited to consider the historical-material contexts of this eerily familiar moment in time, the moral grayness of the shadow, and uncomfortable truths about the state of a democracy which casts it. To reclaim a culture subsumed with celebrity, we must reckon with the power of the spotlight, understand its distractive ontology, and resist its use whenever tempted. There is no such thing as a one-man-show: it is up to everyone to understand their job on set, and choose when to walk off it.
