Superflex

Superflex
Danish, founded Copenhagen, 1993
Flooded McDonald’s
2009
Single-channel video; color; sound; 21:00 min.
Purchased jointly by Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Museum Purchase, and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, through the Board of Owner’s Acquisition Fund, 2015 (15.6)

To create Flooded McDonald’s, the artist collective Superflex built a life-size replica of the fast-food restaurant and slowly filled it with more than 20,000 gallons of water. The resulting film documents the restaurant as the water level rises, setting trays, cups, and Happy Meal toys afloat in front of a soiled Ronald McDonald statue. Although the scene may initially seem amusing, it has darker overtones, as is typical of Superflex’s work following the devastation of the 2008 financial crisis. Flooded McDonald’s suggests multinational corporations’ complicity in environmental devastation, as they fill global landfills with single-use plastic utensils and straws.