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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Memorial day - 18

I debated with myself whether to write about the subject of today's blog; because its neither a memorial or a public work of art,(well not strictly as its located in an art gallery).But as I posted a photograph of a section of the art work yesterday on YesBut's Images I thought I would identify the work and the artist.

It is the latest (and I mean latest - it was only opened to the public yesterday), exhibit in the Unilever Series, commissioned especially for the Tate Modern Turbine Hall.

The work by the Columbian sculptor Doris Salcedo’s is entitled Shibboleth. Unlike previous exhibits in the series which have made use of the voluminous Turbine Hall, Salcedo has created a crack/chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall floor. From being 2mm wide at its western end it gradually widens over its 167 metre length to being 230mm wide at the eastern end of the Turbine Hall.

On the Tate Modern Web site, it is claimed

" Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.

In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. . .

‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.


In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception".


The word Shibboleth comes from a story in the Old Testament, the Book of Judges, which describes the attempt the Gileadites made to escape across the River Jordan. The modern day definition given in the Oxford Dictionary is "Test word or principle or behaviour or opinion, the use of or inability to use which reveals one's party, nationality, orthodoxy, etc."



I am left with the question: "do works of "art" require such a high-faluting philosophic explanation?"

If the answer to the question: "what is art?" is what the individual deems it to be. Then the individual should be left, if they so wish, to define a meaning.


The work will be on view until 6th April 2008. I'm intrigued to see how they will repair the floor. Will there be a detectable scar left on the floor - which would be appropriate given Salcedos reference to "a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world"

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