Strengthlessness, 2014-2020

Strengthlessness is a sculpture in the form of a bent obelisk—an iconic monument traditionally associated with power, permanence, and domination. By altering its verticality and interrupting its supposed stability, Iván Argote transforms this historically authoritative form into a vulnerable, almost hesitant structure. The obelisk no longer stands as a triumphant marker of conquest or eternity, but as a body that bends, yielding to gravity, time, and context.

Historically, obelisks have been instruments of symbolic power, displaced and recontextualized to affirm imperial narratives. In 1830, Mehmet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt, offered the two obelisks of Luxor Temple to France. One was transported and installed at Place de la Concorde, while the other remained in Egypt and was officially returned by François Mitterrand in 1981. These gestures, framed as diplomatic exchanges, were deeply entangled with colonial power, extraction, and the reassertion of Western dominance through monuments. 

With Strengthlessness, Argote performs a subtle but radical displacement of meaning. Rather than celebrating authority, the bent obelisk undermines it. The gesture is neither destructive nor monumental in the traditional sense; it is poetic, humorous, and disobedient. By bending the form instead of toppling it, Argote exposes the fragility behind symbols that claim universality and endurance. Power, the work suggests, is neither neutral nor immutable—it can curve, falter, and lose its certainty.

Through strategies of fantasy and gentle sabotage, Strengthlessness invites a reconsideration of political symbols and their inherited narratives. The sculpture points to the absurdity and pretension embedded in monuments of domination, proposing vulnerability as an alternative value. In bending the obelisk, Argote opens a space where history is not erased but questioned, and where weakness becomes a form of resistance—an invitation to imagine new relationships to power, memory, and collective identity.

The work has been presented in multiple international contexts, including Museo de Arte de Zapopan, Zapopan, Mexico (2017); The Standard Hotel, New York, USA (2016); MuseumsQuartier Wien, Vienna, Austria (2015); and Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France (2014).