Lifestyle
AK-47s Made Into Artwork Banned from Entering the U.S.
British artist Bran Symondson was planning on showing his works, “Spoils of War,” “Beat of a Wing” and “Virtue of the Vicious” at the Maddox Gallery in Houston, but the pieces will not make it past the airport. Once U.S. customs saw that the pieces were embellished AK-47s, they decided to ban them from entering the country.
Symondson served in Afghanistan. According to a press release on his website, “[Symondson] is now considered to be one of the finest reportage photographers working in the world and is well known for his one-off installations of masterfully embellished AK-47 guns with dollar bills, iconography & butterflies.”
The guns used for the banned pieces were unusable weapons from Afghanistan. These works are politically charged with thoughtful embellishments that relate the pieces to Texas, nature, and peace.
His statements regarding the issue with his work are rather political as well. The Independent quotes him as saying, “It is ironic that the law permits U.S. citizens to go and buy a new, live weapon which I could, in theory, use to create one of my artworks from, which then could technically be used in its intended form, but will not allow my pieces of harmless art into the country.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BHSNZwmDEGU/?taken-by=bran13
