Ballot by Avinda Tishan

An original painting by Avinda Tishan

Avinda Tishan’s *Ballot* is a vicious, unflinching commentary on the degradation of democracy, depicted through the unsettling imagery of stray dogs and crows feasting on the remnants of a tattered ballot box. The stark reds are still present, almost pulsating with the urgency of the decay being shown. In the background, shadowy figures blend into one another, anonymous and faceless, mirroring the disillusionment of the masses—nameless, powerless, and blurred out from the decision-making process. 

The dogs, scavengers by nature, become stand-ins for the corrupt who circle like vultures, waiting to devour whatever scraps they can from the system. There’s a visceral feeling of abandonment here, as if the very fabric of civic duty has been left to rot in the streets. The crows add a foreboding sense of death and doom, and the cracked, broken pavement speaks to the crumbling foundation on which this farce is built. Tishan's symbolism is almost brutal in its clarity—the ballot, once a sacred tool of democracy, is reduced to trash, a feeding ground for the corrupt and the forgotten alike.

Like in Election, Tishan’s commentary is blunt: the promises of democracy are being consumed and discarded by those with the most power, while the rest of society is left in the background, disconnected from the process. It’s not just a critique, it’s a howl of frustration at the system’s failure, asking us to consider: what’s left when the ballot box itself becomes mere refuse?