Our Rogue State (Extended Latin Alphabet Series)

Ferenc Gróf
Our Rogue State (Extended Latin Alphabet Series)
Digital print
2015

In English

Our Rogue State is part of a thematic cycle developed by Ferenc Gróf since 2015. The artwork offers a historical reconsideration of the concept of a state that flouts fundamental international laws; a state that organises or supports terrorist attacks, or systematically violates the most basic human rights. Our Rogue State consists of short but poignant expressions and sentences combined with accent marks that are not part of the Latin alphabet. The text ornamentations conceal a set of pictorial fragments depicting scenes of war or battles considered to be the constitutive events of the identity of different European nations. The fragments, selected from historical paintings from the largest public collections of various European countries, show the praised nation submitting or enslaving its adversaries in an often-questionable imbalance of power. The hidden ambiguity of the title in English – a state is both a condition and a political body – therefore also refers to a critical study of the discourse and direction of the official European culture and art as well as the representations of nation-state.

Courtesy of the artist, acb Gallery (Budapest) and mfc-michèle Didier publishing house (Paris–Brussels).