Entropa

“Entropa is a sculpture created by Czech artist David Černý under commission for the Czech Republic to mark the occasion of its presidency of the Council of the European Union. The sculpture was supposed to have been created jointly by 27 artists and artist groups from all member countries of the EU; but in a hoax, Černý and his three assistants created the satirical and controversial work depicting pointed stereotypes of European nations and fake artist profiles complete with invented descriptions of their supposed contributions.

With no clear indication made by the artist nor by the official presentation, various interpretations of a single country can be drawn:

• Austria, a known opponent of atomic energy, is a green field dominated by nuclear power plant cooling towers; vapour comes out of them at intervals

• Belgium is presented as a half-full box of half-eaten Praline chocolates
• Bulgaria is depicted by a series of connected "Turkish" squat toilets; neon-like lights connect and illuminate them
• Cyprus is jigsawed in half
• The Czech Republic's own piece is an LED display, which flashes controversial quotations by Czech President Václav Klaus
• Denmark is built of Lego bricks, and some claim to see in the depiction a face reminiscent of the cartoon controversy, though any resemblance has been denied by the artist
• Estonia is presented with a hammer and sickle-styled power tools, the country has considered a ban on Communist symbols
• Finland is depicted as a wooden floor and a male with a rifle lying down, imagining an elephant and a hippo.
• France is draped in a "GRÈVE!" banner
• Germany is a series of interlocking autobahns, described as "somewhat resembling a swastika", though that is not universally accepted; some Czech military historians also suggest that the autobahns resemble the number "18", which some Neonazi groups use as code for A.H. initials. Cars move along the roads.
• Greece is depicted as a forest that is entirely burned, possibly representing the 2007 Greek forest fires and the 2008 civil unrest in Greece.
• Hungary features an Atomium made of its common agricultural products melons and Hungarian sausages, based on a floor of peppers
• Ireland is depicted as a brown bog with bagpipes protruding from Northern Ireland; the bagpipes play music every five minutes
• Italy is depicted as a football pitch with several players who appear to be masturbating with the footballs they each hold.
• Latvia is shown as covered with mountains, in contrast to its actual flat landscape
• Lithuania a series of dressed Manneken Pis-style figures urinating; the streams of urine are presented by a yellow lighting glass fibers
• Luxembourg is displayed as a gold nugget with "For Sale" tag
• Malta is a tiny island with its prehistoric dwarf elephant as its only decoration; there's a magnifying glass in front of the elephant
• The Netherlands has disappeared under the sea with only several minarets still visible; the piece is supposed to emit the singing of muezzins
• Poland has a piece with priests erecting the rainbow flag of the Gay rights movement, in the style of the U.S. Marines raising the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima.
• Portugal is shown as a wooden cutting board with three pieces of meat in the shape of its former colonies of Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique
• Romania is a Dracula-style theme park, which is set up to blink and emit ghostly sounds at intervals.
• Slovakia is depicted as a Hungarian sausage (or a human body wrapped in Hungarian tricolor)
• Slovenia is shown as a rock engraved with the words first tourists came here 1213
• Spain is covered entirely in concrete, with a concrete mixer situated in the northeast
• Sweden does not have an outline, but is represented as a large Ikea-style self-assembly furniture box, containing Gripen fighter planes (as supplied to the Czech Air Force)
• The United Kingdom, known for its Euroscepticism and relative isolation from the Continent, is "included" as missing piece (an empty space) at the top-left of the work”