Anvil Head
Augmented reality (AR)
Variable dimensions
2018
Richard Humann • Anvil Head installed over WhiteBox Gallery, New York City, 2018
In meteorology, an anvil head is the flattened, spreading top of a cumulonimbus cloud, signaling that a thunderstorm has reached maturity. Its appearance warns of potentially destructive conditions, including lightning, hail, and tornadoes. In Anvil Head, Richard Humann uses this atmospheric formation as a metaphor for the political divisions and growing instability of the United States.
Installed as an augmented reality work above Whitebox Gallery on New York City’s Lower East Side, Anvil Head takes the form of a map of the United States. Its red and blue coloration refers to the two dominant political parties in American electoral politics: red represents the Republican Party, and blue represents the Democratic Party. These colors, familiar from election maps and television coverage, have become shorthand for the country’s competing political identities, ideologies, and visions for its future.
By transforming the electoral map into the form of a storm cloud, Humann connects the division of the country into red and blue states with the gathering energy of a potentially destructive weather system. The colors distinguish opposing political affiliations, but together they form a single national landscape suspended beneath the ominous shape of the anvil head. The metaphor suggests that the consequences of partisan conflict extend beyond individual states or party loyalties, affecting the country as a whole.
The storm formation also serves as a warning. An anvil head signals that a thunderstorm has reached maturity and that dangerous conditions may follow. Similarly, the work evokes a political climate in which ideological polarization, mutual distrust, and diminishing common ground have accumulated into a source of national tension. The storm does not belong exclusively to either red or blue America; it encompasses both, suggesting that political instability is a shared condition with consequences for the entire nation.
By merging the recognizable map of the United States with the threatening form of a storm cloud, Anvil Head transforms political polarization into a physical presence above the gallery. The work asks viewers to consider what happens when differences between political parties become entrenched divisions within a shared society. Like the atmospheric formation that gives the sculpture its title, the political storm is both a visible sign of accumulated forces and a warning of what those forces may bring.
Augmented reality (AR) powered by Membit
Photo credit: Richard Humann Studio