Strike, 2016

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Strike should be considered along the line of works such as Homage to Balotelli’s Missed Trick (2013), Collector’s Wish (2012), Silence Performance (2013), where I explore the ideas of boycott, taking part without participating, misperformance and strike. The work, created specifically for the 7th edition of the Bucharest Biennial titled “What are we building down there?”, consists of an image that is continuously repeating the logos of the sponsors of biennial. The biennial highlighted the themes of privatization, commercialization, and corporatization of the post-socialist city within its very structure, thereby displacing the biennial onto twenty-one advertising billboards.

 

The act of taking part without participating explores the power play between the art world and its sponsors/supporters, and considers the billboard medium as a zone where perhaps the endeavor to subvert and deviate from hegemonic tools reaches its limit. However, within this limit-zone, through cancelling the artistic and creative contribution, the act of self-effacing and repeating the logos becomes an act of liberation and critique. In a way it deconstructs the agreement between creativity, art and capital.