Kneeling On The Neck: Power & Resistance

Kneeling On The Neck captures the volatile collision of power, hypocrisy, and the rewriting of history in real time. A red Viking figure—evoking the recognizable January 6th “QAnon Shaman” trope—stands defiantly on the neck of a police officer.

This inversion forces viewers to confront a disturbing truth: when certain people attack the state, it’s called “patriotism,” but when marginalized people demand justice, it’s called “violence.”

Through figurative sculpture and political symbolism, this work dismantles the myth of “law and order” and reveals who the law is truly built to protect.

This sculpture recalls the murder of George Floyd, while also exposing the double standard that allowed insurrectionists to storm the Capitol with impunity.

It brings together two defining images of American power—state violence against the oppressed and privileged rage against democracy—and asks:

Who gets to rebel?

Who gets to breathe?

Who gets forgiven?

By using the Viking as a symbol of aggression, entitlement, and spectacle, the work critiques how extremism is excused when it comes wrapped in flags and slogans.

The piece goes beyond a single event. It interrogates a system where accountability depends on skin color, ideology, and status. It asks viewers to consider the consequences of a nation that punishes protest but tolerates insurrection, that demands “peaceful dissent” from the oppressed while celebrating chaos from the powerful.

This sculpture does not glorify violence—it exposes the violence already embedded in our institutions, our history, and our definitions of justice.

Ultimately, Kneeling On The Neck is a demand for truth. It rejects selective outrage and insists that equality cannot be conditional. Justice cannot exist while one group is allowed to stand on the neck of another—politically, socially, or literally.

Real freedom requires dismantling systems that excuse extremism and silence resistance. Until then, this sculpture stands as a warning—and a call.

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