The Phantom Truck

a project for Documenta 12 (June 16 - September 23, 2007)

Phantom Truck is a real scale reproduction of a mobile biological weapons lab as described by

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell when addressing the U.N. Security Council, prior to the U.S.

invasion of Iraq. The sculpture is a hybrid of renderings used by Colin Powell and photographs of

actual truck trailers found by Kurdish and U.S. Military forces after the invasion. The trailers found

and photographed in Iraq after the U.S. invasion were later determined not to be capable of

biological weapons production. Manglano-Ovalle has produced a platonic idealization of the mobile

lab, giving reality to this 'phantom truck', only to conceal it again within the confines of a darkened

space hidden within the exhibition.