Misplaced Power
This series of six illustrations takes as its starting point the commonly recognized urban pictogram of a crane towing a wrongly parked vehicle, a symbol of control and regulation in public space. However, rather than depicting an ordinary car, the work reconfigures this scenario with vehicles laden with symbolic power: a war tank, the papamobile, the United States presidential car, a shopping cart, a golf cart, and a police car.
By making this substitution, the work questions the notion of the ”unalterable” and the ”privileged” in our society. The icons of power and authority, usually untouchable and fundamental to social and political structures, are presented as objects susceptible to the same treatment as any other improperly parked or misplaced item. The crane, in its role of removing what is out of place, becomes a metaphor for subversion: an image of uprooting, dismantling established hierarchies.
The work not only challenges the urban space but also the dynamics of power that shape our everyday realities. By questioning the ”normality” of these vehicles as symbols of power, authority, and control, it underscores the fragility of the structures that sustain them. The act of removing them highlights the inherent vulnerability of any system of domination, dependent on the perpetuation of its own visibility and the collective acceptance of its hierarchies.
Misplaced Power goes beyond a direct critique of power symbols; it invites broader reflection on control, authority, and the transience of social structures. The vehicles in the work, by being displaced and reconfigured, suggest that the established order is susceptible to chaos, disruptive intervention, and the possibility of a radical reordering of what we consider ”natural” and ”established.”