Exploitation of the Dead 1990

Mladen Stilinović made 'Exploitation of the Dead' using humble materials: small pieces of wood and simple painted geometries. These shapes and colors -- squares, rectangles, bars of red, black, and white -- recall the visual language of early 20th-century revolutionary art. But instead of the crisp, utopian promise of those avant-gardes, Stilinović offers something much more rough-hewn. The hand is everywhere in this work, from the roughly cut boards to the brushstrokes. The ensemble evokes not the heroic construction of a new society, but something closer to its dismantling. The title itself is telling, suggesting that even the ideals of revolution can be mined and commodified. Stilinović leaves us to wonder: what does it mean to make art from the wreckage of history? Perhaps, in the end, it is a way of keeping memory alive, even when its forms are broken and incomplete.