The personal and the political collide in Jonathan Horowitz’s sculpture Hillary Clinton Is a Person Too (2008), a rendering of the Democratic presidential candidate modelled after a kitschy and cute 1970s Mother’s Day figurine. The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (Mocad) has installed the work on the all-American green lawn in front of its on-site Mobile Homestead, a full-scale replica of Mike Kelley’s childhood home conceived as a public sculpture by the late artist. Hillary will be on display through the run of the exhibition of presidential campaign memorabilia inside the homestead, It’s Your Party, Cry If You Want to (until 1 January 2017). In a statement, Horowitz points out: “It’s usually the powerless that have to ask to be recognised as human beings, which can be demeaning. Ironically, Hillary, who is decidedly not powerless, has had to do similar things to seem more likable.” While the sculpture was made the year Clinton lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, issues of perception of women in the political arena continue to resonate in this election cycle. In a nice flip of conventional representations, Clinton is fully clothed, while recent statues of Trump displayed across the US caused a stir with their (unflattering) nudity. Now, if only the statue could capture Clinton’s epic shoulder shimmy in the first presidential debate.
