David Monavardisashvili, Komissovan, 1984, mixed media
on bedframe, 77 x 98.1 x 2.7 cm.
Image from the collection of the Norton and Nancy Dodge
Collection at Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New
Jersey
This piece of art is originally from a four paneled work that depicts the institutionalization of an Estonian soldier in the Soviet army that refused to follow an order. The four panels show the soldier's slow dissent into insanity where he is tortured along the way by doctors and nurses at the institution. This piece, Komissovan, is the last piece in the series where the soldier is represented with five cuckoos pecking at his skull, or very being.
I chose to appropriate this image for my own purposes because of the obvious cuckoo reference. This is in no means intended as a slight at the blight of the Estonian soldier, rather, it is a reuse of an image.
This artwork was included in my undergraduate honor's project where I curated a show entitled "Nonconformist Art: Works of the Soviet Republic of Georgia". The catalog from the show can be found in the UNC library system at the Sloane Art Library (N7292.9 .N65 2000). Please help my ego and check it out. You can find the introduction online here. These people lifted it from the catalog and republished it on the Internet without my permission.