Bojan Radovič Interview

In The Icon/The Star, Slovenian artist Bojan Radovič examines how the five-pointed star as a revolutionary symbol is appropriated and re-used in a contemporary globalised world. With the fall of the Berlin wall and the demise of communism in Europe, the red star is progressively emptied of its ‘original’ meaning. Today, as time passes, the star symbol simply floats around different countries and brands, in various advertising and consumer contexts. Radovič points to this shifting of the meaning of the star as the consequence of the capitalist process of re-branding, which slowly and steadily divests the red star of its historical and revolutionary power. Rather than simply observing this phenomenon, the artist highlights a revolutionary symbol that is caught in the process of being assimilated into the easy consumerist world of capitalism and emptied of its past socialism. Radovič is also concerned with how the act of photographing the star in such contexts prompts new ways of seeing the image and thinking about its meaning. Unfettered from its more indexical meaning, the red star signifies things other than itself, as part of a wider system of signs.