Tootsie Warhol (b. 1985, New York - @tootsiewarholNY), is a New York-based artist and activist with degrees from the University of Virginia (B.A. American History and Spanish, 2007) and Brooklyn Law School (J.D., 2010).
On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration, tootsie warhol met with the president at Trump Tower along with civil rights leaders to discuss voter suppression. In an act of self-redemption, the artist defaces the iPhone screenshot of himself shaking hands with Mr. Trump from the New York Times digital front page by hand scrawling Mr. Trump’s own words over the image. tootsie warhol applies this method to other photos which capture key human and civil rights violations by Mr. Trump. Moreover, tootsie warhol’s meeting with Mr. Trump has inspired his performance as a satire of the president, most notably, MAKING THE BIENNIAL GREAT AGAIN! (The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2019), which channels the experience of meeting the president to many people who may not have that opportunity.
He became deeply engaged in human rights as an assistant district attorney in the Brooklyn DA’s Domestic Violence Bureau where he aided Spanish-speaking female victims of domestic violence from Bushwick and Sunset Park. He is an active member of the MoMA Junior Associates, the Guggenheim Young Collector’s Council, and the Whitney Contemporaries.
