A golden statue of a bathrobe-clad Harvey Weinstein, seated regally atop a couch with an Oscar in hand, took up temporary sidewalk residence close to the site of the Academy Awards.
"Casting Couch" is a collaborative work between a Los Angeles street artist known as Plastic Jesus and Joshua "Ginger" Monroe, designer of 2016's nude Donald Trump statues placed in major U.S. cities.
The life-sized Weinstein sculpture, displayed Thursday on Hollywood Boulevard, aims to spotlight the entertainment industry's sexual misconduct crisis and the disgraced studio mogul's role in it, Plastic Jesus said.
"There's so much about Hollywood that's great and celebrated in the Oscars, but there's also this underbelly of darkness within the industry that we often sweep under the carpet or ignore," said Plastic Jesus, formerly a London-based photographer.
The phrase "casting couch," used to describe the demand of sexual favors for work, may seem a relic of a bygone era but is "still very much a part of the Hollywood culture," he said.