The Illegal Edward Snowden Statue Lived on As a Digital Projection

On Monday, word spread that a statue of whistleblower Edward Snowden had been illegally installed in a Brooklyn park by four unidentified artists. By the end of the day, the four-foot-tall, 100-pound installation had been removed by the NYPD.

Now, another group of artists is filling the void. A group called The Illuminator Art Collective recreated a temporary version of the original project by projecting an image of the sculpture into a cloud of smoke.

The Illuminator Art Collective, a political art project involving eight artists in total, said on its website that the group was inspired by the original artists' goal "to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies."

"Our feeling is that while the State may remove any material artifacts that speak in defiance against incumbent authoritarianism, the acts of resistance remain in the public consciousness. And it is in sharing that act of defiance that hope resides," the collective wrote.