Better be watching the clouds_Plate 60

2000, printed 2017

Better be watching the clouds_Plate 60, 2000, printed 2017. Walid Raad (Lebanese, b. 1967). Pigmented inkjet print mounted to Dibond; sheet: 76.2 x 50.8 cm (30 x 20 in.); secondary support: 76.2 x 50.8 cm (30 x 20 in.); frame: 78.1 x 52.7 x 3.5 cm (30 3/4 x 20 3/4 x 1 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Alma Kroeger Fund 2017.194 Walid Raad uses storytelling and surreal images to pose questions about political history and what is true. Here, thistle blossoms in a Middle Eastern botanical guidebook are faces of Soviet leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Leonid Brezhnev. According to Raad, the collaged page belonged to a former Lebanese intelligence officer and botanist who assigned floral code names to world leaders during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1991).