PORTRAITS OF INVISIBLE POWER
Ten artworks exploring the unseen architecture of wealth, authority, and control.
We invented money. We created institutions. We built systems to serve us. Somewhere along the way, we began serving the very structures we created.
Portraits of Invisible Power is a series of ten original mixed-media artworks examining the invisible mechanisms that shape contemporary society.
Through shredded U.S. currency, handmade paper, gold foil, and other materials, familiar symbols of wealth and value are dismantled and reconstructed into complex visual structures.
Each artwork explores a different manifestation of power: accumulation, conformity, institutional authority, perceived security, and the boundaries between freedom and control.
The series culminates in The False Exit, questioning whether the paths we perceive as liberation might simply lead into another structure of confinement.
These works are not portraits of powerful individuals. They are portraits of the systems that make power possible.
Created throughout 2026, the series forms a unified visual investigation into the fragile nature of value, the permanence of authority, and the contradictions of modern life.
Doina Mihaela Iacob
Contemporary Visual Artist
Contemporary Visual Artist
United States | 2026