INDECLINE

INDECLINE is an activist art collective founded in 2001. It is comprised of anonymous graffiti writers, filmmakers, photographers, and full-time rebels and activists. Most of the issues INDECLINE’s art addresses are rooted in social, ecological, and economical injustices carried out by the American government, global capitalist corporations, and fascistic law enforcement agencies. Today, their public art largely criticizes oligarchs, technocrats, and of course, the Trump administration and his MAGA movement. As a decentralized group, sometimes dubbed by members as the largest underground movement of activists, musicians, graffiti writers, photographers, INDECLINE is known for their lawlessness, sense of humor, and Jackass-like stunts.

Notable works by INDECLINE include “Bumfights,” a massively controversial film series begun in 2002 about street violence, “The Emperor Has No Balls” a series of statues of a naked, fat, orange, and castrated Donald Trump which was shipped to cities around the US and placed in public, and “¡Rape Trump!”, a large-scale mural of Trump (the then American presidential contender) painted on the US-Mexican border wall, depicting him with ball gag. In 2015, INDECLINE painted “THIS LAND WAS OUR LAND” across a landing strip in California’s Mojave Desert. At the time, it was considered the largest piece of illegal graffiti in the world. The long stretch of letters required six days of labor to create, contains over 250 gallons of paint, and is over half a mile wide (about twice as wide as MTA’s 2008 piece on the LA River bed, which, before it was removed, was generally considered to be the world’s largest piece of illegal graffiti). THIS LAND WAS OUR LAND was a pressing reminder to the eyes in the sky about the urgency of addressing climate change. As an anonymous member of INDECLINE noted, “we were all given this earth and we’ve let people take it from us.”

Although head organizers of INDECLINE have been arrested and jailed many times in various cities around the world, the group continues to anonymously make headlines with their anti-capitalist, anti-ownership, and anti-Trump art— no matter how offensive or radical.