Auad has created something comparable to Mike Kelley's Lumpenprole, 1991, in which piles of soft toys were hidden beneath an Afghan rug, rendering it lumpy and prompting the idea that a floor covering can have a bad conscience: This carpet is both infested and haunted, a cross between a beach and a battlefield--blurring the boundaries between relaxation and death.

Both are depicted as primitives, parasites, and seducers; as either pimps, prostitutes, and lumpenproles, or elitists who control the economy, education, and entertainment; as creatures submerged in nature yet incapable of any natural feeling.

But the lumpenprole may harbor very different-and unvoiced-ideas about what the Soviet Union needs.