What in the world was a guillotine doing on a Greenpoint roof?

October 22, 2018 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Photo courtesy of HannahSilkChampagne via Twitter

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Greenpoint artist Hannah Silk Champagne was looking out her window last Monday when she noticed a large, rusty guillotine on the roof across from her office.

After Champagne tweeted a photo of it, the image went viral, according to Vice.

Was it a political message or a Halloween item? No one seemed to know.

Eventually, the guillotine was found to be the creation of photographer and artist James Schieberl. He said it was a symbol of the nation’s broken, for-profit health care system, Vice reported.

“I always thought it was ridiculous that, out of however many first-world countries, that we were the only ones who don’t have free health care,” Schieberl told Vice on Thursday. The name of the piece, by the way, is “Free Healthcare.”

The guillotine, a symbol of the excesses of the French Revolution, was invented in 1789 by French physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin as a humane means of execution. It has never been used in the United States.