Stanya Kahn Debuts Video On Luigi Mangione Saga, Healthcare Disgust

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Artist Stanya Kahn has premiered a 30-minute video titled Deny, Defend, Depose (2026), which examines the public reaction to the December 4, 2024, killing of United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. The work, named after a message scratched onto bullet casings by the alleged shooter, Luigi Mangione, explores online responses that combined disgust with the healthcare industry and dark humor.

Mangione, who reportedly harbored resentment toward the company due to years of severe back pain, became an unexpected figure of folk hero status online. Surveillance footage captured a masked individual shooting Thompson outside an investor conference in New York. The alleged shooter then fled on a Citi Bike, leaving a backpack containing Monopoly money in Central Park, and was later apprehended in Pennsylvania after a McDonald's employee reported him.

Kahn, a Los Angeles -based filmmaker and video artist, began collecting social media posts-referred to by the artist as“tweets” despite the platform being X by 2023-shortly after the news broke. Her video features these posts, with names and avatars digitally obscured for privacy, displayed rapidly over an acid/jungle soundtrack by artists including Acid Arab, Baseck, and Caterina Barbieri, as well as Kahn herself. The video incorporates the actual surveillance footage of Thompson's shooting.

The initial screening of Deny, Defend, Depose took place on September 6 at Human Resources, an LA movie theater, where Kahn also sold T-shirts bearing the work's title. Additional screenings are scheduled for September 11 at the cinema/bookstore Now Instant, and on October 13 at Leroy's art gallery. Kahn is also seeking a venue to screen the project in New York.

Kahn's previous solo exhibitions include presentations at the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, MoMA PS1, and the New Museum in New York. Her work has been featured in group shows at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Whitney Biennial. Her art is included in the collections of institutions such as the Hammer, MoMA, the Walker, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Regarding the online reactions to the event, Kahn observed a significant public sentiment. She stated,“Perhaps what astonished me the most was the breadth and the depth to which a general American public seemed to be at a tipping point around the exorbitant cost of health care and how cavernous the gap is between the one percent and the 99 percent.” She added that she was“moved to see such a plain representation of the breadth of a disaffected public that so easily celebrated violent direct action.” Kahn concluded,“So one of the things we learned was that the American public has no love for a CEO, and seemed closer to accepting violent direct action than I knew.”

Mangione pleaded guilty on August 14 to two federal charges of stalking Thompson, stating,“I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died.” His federal trial is scheduled for January 2027.

Source: ARTnews

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