Your country doesn't exist

Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson opened their show Under Deconstruction last friday at the National Gallery. The show included Il Tuo Paese Non Esiste, 2011 (Your Country Doesn´t Exist) (ongoing from 2003). The fact that they have been working on this project for many years, producing different iterations in relation to varying contexts and countries, gives the initial title a lot of body. I would nearly want to see this title materialized in every single language of every single nation state of the world... From the moment I saw this image, it did its work - made its way to my conscience and my subconscious. And hasn't left it since. This sentence is important. It anticipates a shift in thinking and in the way we categorize the world. All we need to do it is appropriate it. Luckily, we can start by wearing it because Libia and Ólafur designed a very seductive t-shirt bearing the words.. in Icelandic!