A huge art installation that prompted an outcry by depicting stereotypes of EU member states, including a squat toilet, was removed on Monday from an EU building.
Its creator, Czech artist David Cerny, announced last month that he wanted to remove his work, called Entropa, from its central Brussels home in protest against the fall of the center-right government of former Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek — who lost a parliamentary confidence vote.
He has said the government was “wiped out by the old Bolsheviks and socialists and President [Vaclav] Klaus.”
PHOTO: EPA
“I want to send a message that I don’t want to have anything in common with the new government, or semi-government. It’s not even a government,” he said by telephone in Prague on Monday.
The Czech Republic holds the EU’s rotating presidency for the first half of this year and Entropa was installed in January as the official artwork for the country’s six months at the helm.
Entropa is a symbolic map of Europe depicting stereotypes attributed to the 27 EU member countries.
Commissioned by Prague, the work covering 16m² has angered above all Bulgaria, portrayed as a “Turkish” squat toilet.
At the opening ceremony, Cerny apologized to all who had felt insulted, and the presidency later covered the Bulgarian image with cloth, bowing to official protests from Sofia.
The Cerny map of Europe also includes an image of France “on strike” and Germany criss-crossed with autobahns to create a shape some have likened to a swastika.
Italy is covered with soccer players holding strategically placed balls and Sweden is a box of pre-fab furniture.
Britain is absent completely, a poke at London’s perceived lack of commitment to the European project.
While controversial, the work often attracted unusually large crowds to the huge atrium of the European Council building, which regularly hosts EU summits and ministerial meetings.
It was supposed to be a collaboration between artists from throughout the EU, but before it was officially unveiled Cerny admitted that it was the work of himself and a few friends.
As Cerny waived his fee for the work amid the row over its production, he now owns it and is free to take it wherever he wishes, a Czech EU presidency official said.
“The Czech [EU] Presidency preferred the option to let the installation remain in Brussels as originally planned,” a spokesman for interim Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer said in a statement. “However, the presidency fully respects artistic freedom.”
Not everyone was sad to see it go.
“We are happy, finally,” said Betina Joteva, spokeswoman for the Bulgarian EU office.
Cerny said he planned to hang the work at the Dox contemporary art gallery in Prague for two months over the summer.
The Czech artist and sculptor said it was more important to him where the work was displayed than what it’s worth, though he would want to recoup his production costs of almost 500,000 euros (US$680,000).
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS