Thomas Demand Ballot, 2018

Thomas Demand’s Ballot depicts rows of small desks, shielded on three sides. These voting booths, lined up in close proximity that makes their function as privacy shields obsolete, stand for an entire political process. Demand, who with Poll in 2001 previously thematized the US electoral process, noted in 2018 in regard to the image of stored voting booths, “Who would have thought … that a ballot would suddenly become a highly charged, nearly utopian concept, the proposition that you would have a free and independent choice? Those voting booths are such iconic objects. And you need them for one thing, every four years or so. Otherwise this privacy booth disappears, boxed up like a wedding dress.”