Statue of Harvey Weinstein appears in Hollywood ahead of the Oscars

A statue of Harvey Weinstein has appeared on Hollywood Boulevard ahead of the Oscars ceremony this Sunday night.

The golden effigy of the disgraced producer is called Casting Couch, and finds Weinstein sitting on a chaises longue wearing a dressing gown and slippers.

Clutched in the producer’s hand is a miniature Oscar statuette.

It’s been created by street artists Plastic Jesus and Joshua ‘Ginger’ Monroe, who was responsible for a series of nude statues of Donald Trump placed in cities around the US in 2016.

“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 of the piece.

“For many, many people, aspiring actors and actresses, that would have been their dream to be close to Harvey,’ but that reality has proven a nightmare for some.”

The statue is made from fiberglass and acrylic resin, and took two months to make.

Weinstein, whose movies like Shakespeare In Love and The King’s Speech won Oscars for Best Picture, stands accused by more than 70 women of sexual misconduct, from harassment to rape.

According to numerous testimonies, he would often entice women to his hotel suites, and would be found wearing a bath robe.

He continues to deny that he had any non-consensual sexual relations with any of the claimants.

The statue follows another work by right-wing artist Sabo, who hired three billboards in Los Angeles emblazoned with slogans, mirroring the Oscar-nominated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

The boards read ‘We all knew and still no arrests’, ‘And the Oscar for the biggest pedophile goes to…’ and ‘Name names on stage or shut the hell up!’

“My ultimate goal for these billboards is that maybe I might break the actors’ façade during the [Oscars] show because I know that if they had it their way, they would act as if nothing was going on and nothing happened, and they would have their show and be done with it,” Sabo told Entertainment Weekly.

The Oscars happen this weekend at the Dolby Theater.

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