A giant art installation commissioned by the Czech Presidency and set up in the foyer of the imposing EU Council building in Brussels has turned out to be fake and insulting to many EU member states.
David Cerny, the Czech artist behind the mosaic, entitled Entropa, which plays with national stereotypes of EU member states, yesterday admitted he had deceived his government over the work.
The EU Czech Presidency could not have started its six-month stint at the helm of the EU on a worse footing.
The installation was originally intended to be the common work of artists from the 27 member states with a funding of €350,000. However, Mr Cerny decided, without consulting anyone, to go it alone and, in a bid to respect his contract, he invented the names of the 26 other collaborators, including a phantom Maltese artist.
The revelations proved to be grossly embarrassing to the Czech Presidency. Beyond the fraud, in fact, the art piece insults a number of member states.
Malta is depicted as a dwarf elephant, which is almost impossible to see - a negligible lump of rock. In an official publication accompanying the installation, "Maltese artist" Alexander Caruana described the island as a small rock and a cause of laughter.
"Malta is a small, perhaps negligible, lump of rock. For some people, its size may be a cause of mirth. What, then, would they make of our most famous animal, which nobody had ever actually seen: the dwarf elephant, a creature almost too small to miss," the phantom artist asked.
Playing on the Għar Dalam findings, the artist said that "20,000 years ago, Malta was home to an elephant no taller than 90 centimetres. Imagine an elephant so small you can't see it with your own eyes and release it on the island".
To make it look credible, the artist also invented a CV of the Maltese artist involved in the installation complete with a list of past exhibitions.
But other countries had it much worse and they are fuming, particularly Bulgaria, which was depicted as a Turkish toilet.
The Bulgarian government yesterday called the Czech Ambassador in Sofia for an explanation while the Bulgarian Permanent Representation in Brussels called the installation "disgraceful" and "insulting".
The installation, formed by geographical shapes of EU states, also shows France as being on a permanent strike, Romania as a Dracula theme-park and The Netherlands as a series of minarets submerged by a flood, a possible reference to the nation's simmering religious tensions.
Germany is shown as a network of motorways vaguely resembling a swastika, while the UK - criticised by some for being one of EU's most Eurosceptic members - is absent from Europe altogether. Ireland is portrayed as a set of hairy Uilleann pipes.
Challenged by the Czech media, Mr Cerny yesterday acknowledged that he had made up all the artists' names and put together the mosaic with the help of just two friends.
"We knew the truth would come out. But before that, we wanted to find out if Europe is able to laugh at itself," Mr Cerny said.
He added that Entropa "lampoons the socially activist art that balances on the verge between would-be controversial attacks on national character and undisturbing decoration of an official space".
Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Vondra said his government was not aware of what the artist actually did and promised action.
Mr Cerny was already considered to be a controversial choice before the EU installation. His rise to fame goes back to the 1990s when he painted a Soviet tank, a World War II memorial in a Prague square, bright pink.