| Geologists believe it will take approximately 500,000 years for the portraits of the four U.S. presidents carved on Mount Rushmore to erode and become unrecog- nizable. "The Six Grandfathers, Paha Sapa, in the Year 502,002 C.E." asks the viewer to consider Mount Rushmore as a cultural, political, and social symbol by imagining Rushmore's inevitable disappearance and slow return to "nature." As its power to represent fades, the paradox of Rushmore's meaning as a "shrine to democracy"—on land stolen from the Sioux and carved by an artist who was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan—intensifies. A special poster edition of this work was produced for Cabinet Magazine. |
