Mark Lombardi’s ecosystem art depicts the financial connections between shell companies, corporate entities, power brokers, the underworld, terrorists, money-launderers and some of our better-known political figures.  His work includes maps of various scandals – including the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) the Iran-Contra Affair, The World Finance Corporation, and ties between George W. Bush’s energy company and Al-Qaeda.

Big Data, indeed.

How do you create these “narrative structures” – as the artist called them – that name names, mapping how evil flows in the world, and get away with it?

The answer is you don’t.

Mark Lombardi was found hung dead in his locked studio under questionable circumstances the day before his 49th birthday.

Art can be dangerous to your health.  And, get this – the FBI wanted to “borrow” Lombardi’s work from the Whitney Museum of American Art the day after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Ironically, Lombardi’s business card advertised his work as “Death-defying acts of Art and Conspiracy.”  You just can’t make this stuff up.

What’s even more troubling is that the shadow world that Lombardi was mapping is still very much in business; everything from the financial crisis to ISIS.  The Panama Papers are simply another glimpse at this ecosystem of corruption.

My question is – why does it take an artist to see what’s going on?  Where is the fourth estate? Where are the investigative reporters of the New York Times or the Washington Post?

Alas, they are all part of the Corpocracy.

WATCH this video with Mark Lombardi >>

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