Room 2

Rasputin, a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the imperial family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, opens up the second room of the exhibition setting up an esoteric atmosphere on the variations of identity presented by the next 50 works of art. The Russian, the British and the Americans, each on a different wall, make up the three world powers getting their claws into history.

Rasputin

Cloning (2017) raises a relevant issue for the present times, that of human cloning and its implications. The process of producing individual organisms with identical genomes, either by natural or artificial means, may bear both good and bad intentions. Probably, it's a bit of both as it comes in the way of the natural world in the hopes of preserving it just the way it is. Virtosu inspires us to encounter the question not with reflex hysteria, but soberly and on its own merits.

Cloning 

Nadezhda Krupskaya, wife of Vladimir Lenin, was a revolutionary figure in the field of education. She was involved in underground Communist study groups and later on launched adult education programs which provided 30,000 classes to peasants and workers throughout the Soviet Union.

Nadezhda Krupskaya

Alexandra Feodorovna, the favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, was the last Empress of Russia as the consort of Emperor Nicholas II from their marriage on 26 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. Her reputation for encouraging her husband's resistance to the surrender of autocratic authority and her known faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy in its final years.

Alexandra Feodorovna

Lenin was a Russian lawyer, revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his development of the ideology is known as Leninism. 

Lenin

Nicholas II of Russia was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his abdication on 15 March 1917. He advocated modernization based on foreign loans and close ties with France, but resisted giving the new parliament major roles. Ultimately, progress was undermined by Nicholas's commitment to autocratic rule, strong aristocratic opposition and defeats sustained by the Russian military in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. With his death, the 304 years rule of the Romanov dynasty ended.

Nicholas II of Russia

Caodaism is a Vietnamese religion that emerged during the French colonial period of the 1920s and is considered the melting pot of the world's religions. The translation of its official name in Vietnamese means "The Third Great Universal Religious Amnesty".

Caodaism

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was a major communist figure of the Cuban Revolution, while his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture. He is widely regarded as a symbol of rebellion and anti-imperialism.

"Che" Guevara

The Communist Manifesto, originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a political pamphlet written by the German philosophers ”Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels” – who name the current work of art.

Marx and Engels

Fidel Castro was the political leader of Cuba (1959–2008) who transformed his country into the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere. Fidel Castro and his forces ran a campaign of guerrilla warfare which led to the overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. As the country's new leader, Castro implemented communist domestic policies and initiated military and economic relations with the Soviet Union that led to strained relations with the United States, which is pointed out by Vîrtosu in the last work.

Fidel Castro

Baroness (2017). The title of the abstract painting suggests that it is dedicated to either a real or a fictional baroness. One can notice multifarious creatures, which, in fact, constitute a single unity. 

Baroness

The socialist fraternal kiss (2017) was a special form of greeting between socialist leaders. The act demonstrated the special connection that exists between socialist countries, consisting of an embrace, along with a series of three kisses on alternate cheeks. In rare cases, when the two leaders considered themselves exceptionally close, the kisses were given on the mouth rather than on the cheeks.

The socialist fraternal kiss

Sergei Korolev was a lead Soviet rocket engineer and spacecraft designer during the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s. He was hailed by the European Space Agency as “the man responsible for the first human spaceflight”.

Sergei Korolev

Yuri Gagarin was aboard the first successful crewed spaceflight and became the first human to journey into outer space. Gagarin completed one orbit of Earth on 12 April 1961 in 108 minutes.

Yuri Gagarin

Ivan Grozny, better known as Ivan the Terrible, is remembered for his brutal reign and inhuman tactics for maintaining control of Russia through fear. The death of his first wife, Anastasia Romanovna, made him more cruel, vindictive, and paranoid as he believed that the boyars mistakenly poisoned his wife trying to kill him.

Ivan Grozny

The three Bogatyrs was a group of heroes of the Russian folk epics known as byliny. The duty of the bogatyrs was to protect the Russian land against foreign invaders, especially the Tatars.

The Three Bogatyrs

Prince Charles in Waiting brings to attention the longest time to be waited to ascend to the British throne. He is the eldest of Queen Elizabeth's four children and has been first in line to the throne all his life.

Prince Charles in Waiting

Prince Harry, member of the British Royal family, Duke of Sussex, is the younger son of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales. He is fifth in the line of succession to the British throne. He was the first member of the royal family to be in combat during his time in Afghanistan since his uncle, Prince Andrew, flew helicopters in the Falklands War in 1982.

Prince Harry

Anne Boleyn was the second wife of King Henry VIII of England and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I. She was executed by beheading in 1536 after being accused of treason, adultery and incest. She was a key figure in the English Reformation, as her marriage to Henry led him to break with the Roman Catholic Church and establish the Church of England.  It was said that she was the only woman who ever dared to argue and answer back to Henry.

Anne Boleyn

The Royal Guard. A royal guard is a group of military bodyguards, soldiers or armed retainers responsible for the protection of a royal family member. The origins of the regiment were as part of an anti-royalist army and its subsequent declaration for the restored Charles II in 1660, with its consistent maintenance by succeeding monarchs until the present day, marked a break with its own past.

The Royal Guard

Henry VIII was the king of England (1509–47). He broke with the Roman Catholic Church and had Parliament declare him supreme head of the Church of England, starting the English Reformation, which separated the Church of England from papal authority.

Henry VIII of England

Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from November 17, 1558, until her death. Sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen (since she never married), Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth I was the fifth and final monarch of the Tudor dynasty.

Elizabeth I

Bloody Mary, Mary I or Mary Tudor, was known by her nickname for her persecution of Protestants in a vain attempt to restore Roman Catholicism in England. She was the daughter of King Henry VIII and the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. She ruled as Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 and Queen of Spain, once she became the wife of King Philip II, from January 1556 until her death in 1558.

Bloody Mary

Blairism is the political ideology of Tony Blair, the former leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister between 1997 and 2007. Elements of the ideology include investment in public services, expansionary efforts in education to encourage social mobility, and increased actions in terms of mass surveillance alongside a ramping up of law enforcement power.

Blairism

Margaret Thatcher was a British stateswoman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. She was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving of the 20th century. As prime minister, she implemented economic policies that became known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady".

Margaret Thatcher

British diplomacy conveys the efforts of the empire starting with 1485 till the early 21st century, that is since Henry VII became King (1485–1509), founding the Tudor dynasty and ending the long civil war called "Wars of the Roses" until the present days.

British diplomacy

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and navigator from the Republic of Genoa who completed four Spanish-based voyages across the Atlantic Ocean sponsored by the Catholic Monarchs, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and European colonization of the Americas. His expeditions were the first known European contact with the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Christopher Columbus

Robben Island is situated north of Cape Town, South Africa. Since the end of the 17th century, Robben Island has been used for the incarceration of chiefly political prisoners. It is mostly known as a prison and a hospital for unfortunates who were sequestered as being socially undesirable. This came to an end in the 1990s when the inhuman Apartheid regime was rejected by the South African people.

Robben Island

Abraham Lincoln was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. His Emancipation Proclamation paved the way for slavery’s abolition, while his Gettysburg Address stands as one of the most famous pieces of oratory in American history. 

Abraham Lincoln

James Cook was a British explorer, cartographer and naval officer famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He was one of the first to participate in the European colonization that settled in the Americas.

Captain James Cook

Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister and activist who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. On October 14, 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Lona and Morris Cohen were two Soviet secret agents from the U.S who found out nuclear and military secrets of the U.S. and the UK, but still managed to receive a Royal pardon. They were part of a ring of atomic spies who were later revealed to have been far more damaging to US interests than the Rosenberg ring.

Lona and Morris Cohen

Shintoism is regarded as Japan's indigenous religion and as a nature religion. Shinto revolves around supernatural entities called the kami. The kami are believed to inhabit all things, including forces of nature and prominent landscape locations.

Shintoism

Captivity of industry (2015) reflects back on the coercions of evolution, how Mother Nature has been sentenced to suffering in order to accommodate the human being and his endeavours.

Captivity of industry

Henry Ford was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford created the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, and his conversion of the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.

Henry Ford

Technological diseases captures the turmoil of the contemporary man as he is being imprisoned in the dying need for technological extensions of his body, be it mind or physical.

Technological diseases

Hillary Clinton is an American politician and diplomat who served as the 67th United States secretary of state under president Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States senator representing New York from 2001 to 2009, and as the first lady of the United States as the wife of President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. 

Hillary Clinton

Elon Musk is a South African-born American entrepreneur who cofounded the electronic-payment firm PayPal and formed SpaceX, maker of launch vehicles and spacecraft. He was also one of the first significant investors in, as well as chief executive officer of, the electric car manufacturer Tesla. In addition, Musk acquired Twitter in 2022.

Elon Musk

Bill Clinton was the 42nd president of the United States and oversaw the country’s longest peacetime economic expansion. He became the second U.S. president to be impeached but acquitted by Senate in 1999. He signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), making trade between Canada, Mexico, and the United States easier.

Bill Clinton

“2000 Camp David Summit” attempts to capture the emotional climate of a historic event, the meeting between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat, a moment in time when expectations, anger and disappointment clashed. The summit took place between 11 and 25 July 2000 and was an effort to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The summit ended without an agreement.

2000 Camp David Summit

Monica Lewinsky is an American activist and writer who gained international celebrity status as a result of the public coverage of a political scandal when American President Bill Clinton admitted to having an affair with her while she worked at the White House as an intern in 1995 and 1996. She is also known for her efforts to end cyberbullying.

Monica Lewinsky

America’s Guide fosters the path needed to be taken in order for something to be born. A compass aiming towards starting from scratch is not enough, therefore, the artwork reminds of the necessity of sharing knowledge with a living being in order to succeed.

America’s Guide

American Policy in the 21st century is an artwork furthering the need to look closely and critically to the present times. 

American Policy in the 21st century

America in the 30th century (2015). The searing image is a riveting embodiment of the instinctive and unrivalled brilliance which predicts US destiny in the far future, a presumption confirmed by the previous artwork.

America in the 30th century

Richard Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. His five years in the White House saw reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the first crewed Moon landings. Nixon's second term ended early, when he became the only president to resign from office as a result of the Watergate scandal.

Richard Nixon

Jimmy Carter, as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, helped negotiate a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, signed a treaty with Panama to make the Panama Canal a neutral zone after 1999, and established full diplomatic relations with China. He also became the first sitting or former American president to visit Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

Jimmy Carter

Donald John Trump is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Donald Trump

Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th president of the United States (1901–09) and a writer, naturalist, and soldier. He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1906 for mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), and he secured the route and began construction of the Panama Canal (1904–14). Roosevelt believed that nations, like individuals, should pursue the strenuous life and do their part to maintain peace and order, and he believed that “civilized” nations had a responsibility for stewardship of “barbarous” ones.

Theodore Roosevelt

Obama and Trump, Hybrid Policy. Obamacare, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, The Clean Power Plan were some of the acts which Trump inherited from the former president. Whether their policies were opposites, twins or enmeshed remains a question to be answered.

Obama and Trump, Hybrid Policy

The protector of America is an artwork to be perceived solely after having interacted with the entire room.

The protector of America

Cuba at the arrival point (2015) rounds up the room by means of exemplifying what conflictual interests and uncertainty can do to a country with many resources.

Room 2

1. Rasputin

2. Cloning

3. Nadezhda Krupskaya

4. Alexandra Feodorovna

5. Lenin

6. Nicholas II of Russia

7. Caodaism

8. "Che" Guevara

9. Marx and Engels

10. Fidel Castro

11. Baroness

12. The socialist fraternal kiss

13. Sergei Korolev

14. Yuri Gagarin

15. Ivan Grozny

16. The Three Bogatyrs

17. Prince Charles in Waiting

18. Prince Harry

19. Anne Boleyn

20. The Royal Guard

21. Henry VIII of England

22. Elizabeth I

23. Bloody Mary

24. Blairism

25. Margaret Thatcher

26. British diplomacy

27. Christopher Columbus

28. Robben Island

29. Abraham Lincoln

30. Captain James Cook

31. Martin Luther King Jr.

32. Lona and Morris Cohen

33. Shintoism

34. Captivity of industry

35. Henry Ford

36. Technological diseases

37. Hillary Clinton

38. Elon Musk

39. Bill Clinton

40. 2000 Camp David Summit

41. Monica Lewinsky

42. America’s Guide

43. American Policy in the 21st century

44. America in the 30th century

45. Richard Nixon

46. Jimmy Carter

47. Donald Trump

48. Theodore Roosevelt

49. Obama and Trump, Hybrid Policy

50. The protector of America

51. Cuba at the arrival point

Rasputin