Man Bartlett: Not at Liberty

In face of the current political climate in the U.S., Man Bartlett has devised responses anchored on a tradition of nonviolent resistance to blatant abuse while denouncing the rippling effects of inequity.

A long-time proponent of internet and web-based art, Bartlett’s practice is often relational in its nature, durational in its scope and with meditative qualities, encompassing a variety of mediums, such as drawing, video, performance, meditation sessions, sound, a music show on the East Village Radio, and field recordings of his city dwelling routines.

Such is the case with Not at Liberty, a project with a title intended to reflect the political undertone and the artist’s travels. In February of 2026, Bartlett traveled from his apartment in Manhattan, past the Statue of Liberty, to Staten Island. The journey was a quiet meditation on proximity and remove, on what it means to move through the world as a body among other bodies while the state systematically dismantles the lives and futures of people it has deemed disposable. Thus, the title functions on two levels. The first is literal: Bartlett was not at the Statue of Liberty but passing by it on a ferry filled with tourists and locals. The second borrows the language of official evasion, the phrase deployed by politicians and intelligence officials to claim silence as protocol, for example, "I'm not at liberty to discuss the murder of U.S. citizens by ICE."

At Galeria Ocupa’s front window Man Bartlett presents HOT AIR, whose title is a reference to the idiom “full of hot air,” suggesting that someone is full of lies, exaggerations or nonsense, and two sound pieces – PASSING LIBERTY in the main room which arrives as sound alone, refusing the visual documentation of decline and asking the listener to be present to what cannot be fully seen, only felt; and ICE MELTS in the former meat shop’s freezer in which the artist used a hydrophone to record the sound of ice cubes melting, eventually hastened by heat from his hands. The title is a direct reference to the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), and the metaphorical methods that might be taken to dismantle it: patience, persistence, and determination.

A 7-inch lathe-cut record will be released by esculápio artist editions.