Police in Richmond, Virginia were met with a startling sight when they arrived at the city’s Bryan Park this morning: effigies of clowns dressed in KKK robes hanging from a tree.

(Image: Ned Oliver/Richmond Times-Dispatch)

It has to be a guerrilla marketing campaign for the movie “It” – right?

No, apparently it is art. Art disguised as a political statement. Or a political statement disguised as art. Crappy, crappy art.

The art collective INDECLINE, which released a video showing four masked men dressed in black hanging the clowns overnight, said in a press release the action is intended as a “protest of the White Nationalist uprising in the United States.”

Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter Ned Oliver was on the scene.

They hung effigies of clowns dressed in KKK robes in Bryan Park "in protest of the White Nationalist uprising in the United States" pic.twitter.com/Lxzmb3axp6

— Ned Oliver (@nedoliver) September 7, 2017

This is the press release from activist art collective indecline pic.twitter.com/ZABkGRXUKL

— Ned Oliver (@nedoliver) September 7, 2017

The “artists” behind the display are collectively known as INDECLINE, and their most notable work to date has been the statues of a naked Donald Trump that were placed in various large cities, including New York and Las Vegas.

Apparently, anything can pass for art these days.