In the book 'The System of Objects' Jean Baudrillard comments that 'The erotic significance of the object (a car) here plays the same role as the image (real or mental) in masturbation' (1). In the book 'Imagined Communities' Benedict Anderson described the nation as an 'imagined community (2)', a socially constructed imagination. Nationalism and masturbation seem to have similar characteristics as they both involve the subject exciting themselves over an image or imagination. In this piece the bottle is obviously phallic but overall it attempts to capture the similarity between nationalism and masturbation without being too overt. At certain angles the viewer's reflection is caught in the bottle, a reminder that we are all implicated.
[b]References :[b/]
(1) Baudrillard, J. (1996) 'The System of Objects', Verso, London and Brooklyn. p.73
(2) Anderson, B. (1991) 'Imagined Communities; Reflections on The Origins and Spread of Nationalism' Verso, London and New York.

In the book 'The System of Objects' Jean Baudrillard comments that 'The erotic significance of the object (a car) here plays the same role as the image (real or mental) in masturbation' (1). In the book 'Imagined Communities' Benedict Anderson described the nation as an 'imagined community (2)', a socially constructed imagination. Nationalism and masturbation seem to have similar characteristics as they both involve the subject exciting themselves over an image or imagination. In this piece the bottle is obviously phallic but overall it attempts to capture the similarity between nationalism and masturbation without being too overt. At certain angles the viewer's reflection is caught in the bottle, a reminder that we are all implicated.
[b]References :[b/]
(1) Baudrillard, J. (1996) 'The System of Objects', Verso, London and Brooklyn. p.73
(2) Anderson, B. (1991) 'Imagined Communities; Reflections on The Origins and Spread of Nationalism' Verso, London and New York.