Alán Carrasco’s Illégitime, nul et non avenu / Null und nichtig (2020) artwork has been recently acquired by MUSAC Museum. The critical review of the past and the present is a central part of Alán Carrasco´s work, especially evident in Illégitime, nul et non avenu / Null und nichtig.
Between 1940 and 1944, postage stamps with the effigy of the collaborator Philippe Pétain were re-stamped with the portrait of Adolf Hitler, making evident the subordination to the Führer. After 1945, the Reich postage stamps in annexed Austria were re-stamped with the name of the new country and with a graphic pattern concealing the effigy of the defeated Führer. After the liberation of France, the Vichy Regime was declared “illégitime, nul et non avenu” (illegitimate, null and void). For its part, with the proclamation of the independence of Austria, both the Anschluss and all the measures of the National Socialist administration were declared “null und nichtig” (null and void).
Taking this context as an excuse, and after recovering two of these original stamps, the artist presents us with a diptych in which the rise and fall of the Nazi regime serves to reveal the iconoclastic mechanisms of historical narration.