A lone elephant, awash in red paint and stenciled with gold fleur-de-lis, lumbers through the loading deck of a warehouse on Skid Row in L.A. She matches the wallpaper background of a freestanding living room, designed to be the centerpiece of an art exhibition by newly-minted street artist Mr. Brainwash (MBW). The impressive, gentle animal is meant to symbolize the proverbial “elephant in the room,” but the joke seems to be on hip Hollywood attendees and Los Angeles press, who don’t realize they are the elephant. Through the extensive use of irony, Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) provokes questions of authenticity and voice in the street art movement—an underground, secretive counterculture that has gone mainstream.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric