A Reykjavík popular favourite originally located on a pedestal behind ‘Hótel Borg’, in 2012 it was taken off its pedestal to better portray the bureaucrat, and moved to this more fitting location, on the route most of the city’s council (Iðnó) people and officials take to go to work: the sculpture is made of bronze and basalt, and blends together the figurative and abstract to comment on bureaucracy as a whole, and the workers within it. By truthfully depicting something that most everyone can relate to, the ‘trivial existence of the working bee’, it manages to be both humorous and provocative. The block of rock is at the same time a perfect metaphor for how everyday life crushes down on us, and a depiction of the faceless official who is only a cog in the wheel, and never a person to most of us. Even the new location in a closed off back alley, sealed off from any relevance, is a thoughtful comment on the trivial existence of the ‘Unknown Bureaucrat’: one really has to make an effort to find him in his isolated little corner of the universe.
