In a society where the individual has lost all his/her freedom and individuality the institutions reign supreme. The Hollow Men pieces are a remembering or a reflection on such status of things. Defeated and subdued individuals march at the commands of political or cultural institutions incapable of escaping; worse, many times quite unwilling to do so. Broken in their spirit they become emptied. Their illusions of communion and group identification tend to provide a misleading feeling of belonging and meaning in otherwise shattered lives. When such becomes a reality these men and women are turned into mere pieces that are played by the institutions in power. They are seduced into blind commitment or forced into silent serfdom.
Furthermore, the institutions, wishing to remain in power, use these broken men and women as never ending transmitters and receivers of indoctrination. In a constant repetition of ideas and principles the propaganda ‘machine’ becomes entangled with everyday life. People are made agents of their own incessant conditioning. As the artist depicts, they are mutated into instruments, loudspeakers of a common message which they receive from another hollow individual. They become mere masks without form or depth.
Reality and history are transformed into simple dualistic struggles towards a present or future high moment which takes its form in the institution. All events and all memory, public or private, become entangled in this conception of reality. Everything becomes either supportive of the state of things or is denounced as dangerous and eradicated. This rigidity, quite often desired by people, becomes a prison. The constant necessity the individuals have to mold into the institutions’ designs is a destructive force condemning his/her being into unbearable devastation.
The artist recalls how such institutions are not generated out of nothing but erected by those same individuals that will become its victims, and how these individuals tend to either actively or passively accept its growth; even support it, at times, through action or speech.
Eduardo Marques da Costa
From The Bells Brake Down Their Tower 2016 Exhibition
Furthermore, the institutions, wishing to remain in power, use these broken men and women as never ending transmitters and receivers of indoctrination. In a constant repetition of ideas and principles the propaganda ‘machine’ becomes entangled with everyday life. People are made agents of their own incessant conditioning. As the artist depicts, they are mutated into instruments, loudspeakers of a common message which they receive from another hollow individual. They become mere masks without form or depth.
Reality and history are transformed into simple dualistic struggles towards a present or future high moment which takes its form in the institution. All events and all memory, public or private, become entangled in this conception of reality. Everything becomes either supportive of the state of things or is denounced as dangerous and eradicated. This rigidity, quite often desired by people, becomes a prison. The constant necessity the individuals have to mold into the institutions’ designs is a destructive force condemning his/her being into unbearable devastation.
The artist recalls how such institutions are not generated out of nothing but erected by those same individuals that will become its victims, and how these individuals tend to either actively or passively accept its growth; even support it, at times, through action or speech.
Eduardo Marques da Costa
From The Bells Brake Down Their Tower 2016 Exhibition
