Iconoclastic Acts: DISHONOUR TYRANT IDOLS.
Sylvia Eckermann / Gerald Nestler
Series of 13 portraits 2025/26.

ICONOCLASTIC ACTS: DISHONOUR TYRANT IDOLS

Autocrats are on the rise. For decades, reactionary forces with considerable financial and strategic resources have been distorting reality, particularly about social policies, immigration, taxation, and climate change, thereby driving social division. In alliance with technocapitalist oligarchs, they twist the truth, distort facts, bend the law, and manipulate elections. To gain influence and power, they weaponize AI against democracy and fundamental rights.

Art brings imagination to life. In times of conflict, it creates counter-images to violence and abuse of power. Today, however, we need more than a new visual language, we need a different strategy of deconstruction against authoritarian fantasies and their coercive rearrangement of human desires.

We therefore call for iconoclastic acts against the false image of the world they propagate. Criticism and dissent are not enough; we need insurrections that expose and betray those who misappropriate wealth and power. We must abandon loyalty and compliancy and turn renegade to destroy and resolve their abusive power over the imagination.

Each of the four discursive performances of HOTHOUSE. The Future of Demonstration. Season 5, ended with Iconoclastic Acts: DISHONOUR TYRANT IDOLS. In this tribunalistic ritual, we smashed the sculptural representation of some of those who threaten fundamental rights and livelihoods. This artistic insurrection created a less naturalistic but all the more realistic portrayal of today’s authoritarian idols. This was not an act of aggression, but artistic self-defence against the false consciousness of supremacy which only leads to violence and destruction.

Iconoclastic Acts: DISHONOUR TYRANT IDOLS, Series of 13 portraits, 2025/2026.
The photo series exists in two versions:
Version 1:
Box with 13 prints on fine art paper and including 13 quote collections on semi-transparent paper.
Size: 20,30 x 29,70 cm each.
Version 2:
Single prints, framed.  Size 58 x 85 cm each plus frame.