Fraudulent, Controversial EU Installation Shows Bulgaria as Toilet and Romania as Dracula Land
BalkanTravellers.com
The piece, called Entropa, was commissioned by the Czech Republic which holds the EU presidency. It was supposed to be executed by 27 artists from each of the EU member states.
The installation consists of snap-out parts like those used in modelling kits, each of which represents a stereotype, some quite unsettling, of a EU member state: Bulgaria is portrayed as a ‘Turkish toilet’ (pictured above); the Netherlands – submerged under water with tops of mosques’ minarets poking over it; Spain – as drowned in concrete.
Other states’ portrayals are more innocent and humorous – Romania is a Dracula theme park (pictured above); Italy is a boot-shaped football field, Sweden is an IKEA cardboard box; the eternally euro-sceptic United Kingdom is missing from the installation entirely.
As the piece was unveiled last weekend, before its official opening on Thursday, it caused anger among member states. In Bulgaria, especially, there was a public outcry – mostly pointed to the ‘Turkish toilet’ piece’s alleged author – Elena Jelebova.
She, however, turned out to be fictitious. After the initial commotion, Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra told international media that he only found out on Monday that the installation was in fact not the work of 27 European artists, but of contemporary Czech sculptor David Černý and his two colleagues.
Černý, whose past work also tended to be controversial, had presented Entropa to the Czech government with a brochure (available for download here) describing each piece of the installation and the 27 supposed contributors from each member state.
“We knew the truth would come out,” Černý told BBC News. “But before that we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself.”
The artist first gained notoriety in the early 1990s when he painted bright pink a Soviet tank that served as a war memorial in central Prague, for which he was briefly arrested.
Bulgaria will demand that the installation be taken down, the country’s Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin told national media today, adding that the Czech government will announce its decision tomorrow. “If the entire installation stays, then at least the part about Bulgaria should be removed,” Kalfin stated.
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excellent smugs
