January 15 - February 27, 2005, EI Huis


Beheaded/Decapitado




This work uses familiar portraits of political figures as a way to engage the moving or stationary spectator in the crisis or clash of empires. This crisis is not foreign or taking place elsewhere but severs our very subjectivity in the place we stand.

The heads of the leaders are encased in white metal light boxes and float in a void of whiteness. These heads are digital traces of current media representations that are uncanny because of the distortions caused by overlapping and transparency. One head presents itself as more familiar than another or one head seems to dominate the others. Is this empire-building at work?

The spectator walking past or standing still is a partial voyeur of the obscenity of contemporary local and global politics. These citizens, migrants, illegals and refugees stand outside in a "public" space looking into a "private" space, a space that seems even harder to access. The difficulty of access to the private space of political power is multiplied by the additional visual obstacles of light boxes on the windows containing images of walls crowned with broken glass.

[ Nederlands ]