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Home > Virtual Museum > CHGS Exhibitions > Absence/Presence > Absence/Presence Artists : Zbigniew Libera

Zbigniew Libera

Artist Exhibit

General view.

nude figure toysnude figure toys

Eroica

Four box set of 25 nude figures. 1998

nude figure toysnude figure toysnude figure toysnude figure toys

Correcting Device: LEGO Concentration Camp

7 box LEGO set, edition of 3.

Original art work made with LEGO (c) bricks from the LEGO CORPORATION of Copenhagen. The LEGO Corporation does not endorse this art work and has not subsidized its production.

 

Permission of the artist. Galleri Wang, Oslo, Norway, and Paulina Kolczynska Fine Arts, New York.

Artist's Statement

My ability to work with objects is taken from everyday urban contemporary life. In my study of the development of correctional devices and educational toys, I see such devices reveal more about a society and its mechanisms for creating and enforcing its norms than any study of society could.

Lego, a construction made partially from various Lego kits, takes us into a village with a mental hospital, Stalin's prison, World War II and Bosnian concentration camps. Thus, I fell I mix historical with contemporary references to represent our world, our little inferno, as built and sanctified by norms.

Eroica, is a four-boxed set of toy soldier-sized women figures. They are based on classical models. They are a reminder that in the 1990s no toy soldier set is complete without the inclusion of women, who have become the special targets of victimization in genocidal settings such as Bosnia, where rape camps have been well documented. Such is the fashion of "heroic" actions of armies in genocidal and even less violent encounters where women are victims.

During an academic conference in Brussels in December, 1997, an agitated audience, who felt that the Lego Concentration Camp was a real toy which was available for sale, demanded that I comment about why I constructed it. My response then, as it is now, was: "I am from Poland. I've been poisoned."

- Zbigniew Libera

Zbigniew Libera's Lego Concentration Camp: Iconoclasm in Conceptual Art About the Shoah by Stephen C. Feinstein. Other Voices, February 2000.

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