Project Description

In 1989, Hans Haacke was invited to participate in a competition for a work
celebrating the bicentennial of the Assemblée Nationale (the lower house of the
French parliament).However his proposal Calligraphie was not selected. Had it
been, the motto of the French Republic, Freedom, Equality, Fraternity, would have
appeared in Arabic calligraphy on a cone made of rocks from the country’s election
districts. Water emanating from the cone would have flowed around a field of
ordinary French crops. «Today, as it was in 1989, Freedom, Equality, Fraternity are
not extended to all residents of France - nor to those of other nations that include
these principles in their constitutions - particularly not to their Muslim population.
In many societies it is dangerous to invoke them.» Hans Haacke.
Reproductions © Hans Haacke/VG Bild-Kunst

April 2011