Billboard

2017

Site-specific installation with archival image on existing structure

500 x 240 cm, Bucharest

Inspired by the empty billboards in Bucharest, an archival image from March 1985 was installed on an advertising panel in front of the Parliament Palace in March 2017. The image shows the simultaneous construction of the Palace and the sudden demolition of the district below. Subverting the very idea of advertising, the large black and white photograph produced a powerful reaction in the city.

The billboard became a temporary and anonymous monument to the demolished districts, a quiet witness to the destruction, exposing a history of the site suppressed by authorities and breaking the silence surrounding the place. Refraining from declaring authorship of the work, I made the image part of the city, its anonymity addressing the collective imagination.