Art in Embassies
U.S. Department of State
London – United Kingdom
We the People (2017)
We the People is a site-specific painting by Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford
It was created for the new U.S. Embassy in London
“I had a great team of people helping”
Art In Embassies commissioned Bradford to create this monumental work.
It is comprised of 32 ten-foot panels and took a year to complete.
It depicts fragments and full articles from the U.S. Constitution.
The artist has integrated constitutional text into his work since 2013.
The installation of the work required 5 shipping crates,
32 canvasses stretched on site,
and 16 tons of scaffolding.
Installing the work took 17 days.
“One, two, three”
The upper left-hand corner of the painting
begins with the Preamble of the Constitution.
Taken as a whole, the panels render the American government’s founding document
in Bradford’s abstract visual language.
Bradford’s investigation of the central text of the U.S. democracy invites the viewer
to consider the meaning of the words and how they apply today.