Pin The Prick II
Nicolae Ceaușescu, 1936
The artwork combines 3844 glass head pins into one image. Some quite infamous 'pricks' in history started their careers as quite ordinary and often just young tugs. It raises the question: what if we –when they were youngsters– would have been able to pin them down as the infamous 'pricks' they would become later in life… It's a question we can ask ourselves. The least you can say is they have a blood red handprint all over them and should be depicted in a frame in the color of blood.
This artwork is depicting the infamous dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, who started off as a regular apprentice shoemaken, soon to become a notorious street fighter during strikes and riots.
The artwork is based on a police photograph of Ceaușescu, taken after an arrest in 1936 when he was 18 years old. Ceaușescu was imprisoned for two years at Doftana Prison for Communist activities.
Upon his rise to power in 1965, he eased press censorship and openly condemned the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which resulted in a surge in popularity. However, the resulting period of stability was brief as his government soon became totalitarian and was considered the most repressive in the Eastern Bloc at the time. His secret police, the Securitate, was responsible for mass surveillance as well as severe repression and human rights abuses within the country, and controlled the media and press. Under his reign, the Securitate became one of the most brutal secret forces in the world, responsible for the arrests, torture, and deaths of thousands of people.
Building the artwork in pictures
