Dialectics in February by Martijn Hendriks consists of two elements:
1. An inverted royal blue flag with a circular hole cut-out of the middle.
2. A piece of the flag placed on the ground directly below the hole.
As one digs deeper into the work, one understands that the flag from which the hole has been cut is, in fact, the European Union flag.
The power of the work, then, is the erasure of the flag’s power: a European Union whose only rallying cry is that the entire notion of the “European Union” is literally empty – nothing.
Self-annihilating ideas such as this have been explored by artists before, but the use of the flag is particularly effective as the flag – as a symbol of symbolism – short-circuits all meaning directly back onto itself; its impotency becomes – as a flag – to literally wave for itself.