Street artist Plastic Jesus is up to his old tricks.
On Thursday morning, a life-size replica of an Oscar statue bent over and snorting two lines of cocaine was placed on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, ahead of Sunday night’s Academy Awards.
The street art is captioned, “Hollywood’s Best Party.”
“The piece is intended to draw attention to Hollywood’s hidden problem of drug addiction that effects [sic] hundreds of people in the showbiz industry and is largely ignored until the death of a high profile A list celebrity,” Plastic Jesus collaborator Nick Stern said in a statement to LAist.
This is the second time Plastic Jesus has constructed a satirical Oscar statue; last year, the artist put up a life-size statue with a heroin needle in its arm shortly after the death of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.
“When you live in Hollywood and work in the industry, you realize how endemic drug use really is – affecting everyone from aspiring actors and actresses to sound and lighting guys to agents and managers,” the artist told the New York Daily News last year. “But it’s only when you have a high profile death like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Whitney Houston that it hits the news.”
The statue’s appearance and message are unfortunately timely; on Thursday afternoon, 30-year-old Parks and Recreation producer and stand-up comedian Harris Wittels was found dead of a suspected overdose at his Los Feliz home.