"Shibboleth" is a piece that refers to
dangers at crossing borders,
or to being rejected in the moment of crossing borders.
So, I am making a piece about people who had been
exposed to extreme experience of racial hatred
and subjected to human conditions in the first world.
This piece is trying to introduce into the Turbine Hall
another perspective, and the idea is that we all look down
and maybe try to encounter
the experience of these people that I've been referring to
somewhere hidden within this deep
division that is being generated in the Turbine Hall.
The presence of the immigrant is always unwelcome ;
the presence of the immigrant is seen as
jeopardizing the culture of Europe.
Europe is being seen as a homogeneous society,
a democratic society
that has learned, through centuries of development,
has learned to resolve our issues through dialogue
And, if that is the case,
then where do we place these outbreaks of
racial hatred ?
So I think the society is not so homogeneous,
and it's not so democratic.
And there is some people that are experiencing that.
So wherever the world, the Earth opened in the first world...
There is mesh keeping people out or inside as you want to see it
anyway keeping people away.
So it's a piece that is both in the
epicenter of catastrophe, and at the same time it is outside catastrophe.
As you look in you can see, you can get the feeling
of catastrophe in there.
But nonetheless, outside is quite subtle,
and I wanted a piece that intrudes in this space
that is unwelcome like,
like an immigrant that just intrudes without permission,
just get seen slowly and all of a sudden
it's there and it's a fairly big presence.
I believe every work of art is political,
because every work of art is breaking new ground.
And it's in a way against the status quo.
So every work of art - the nature of art is political.
Abstract art, all of it is political, from my point of view.
My work is because of where I come from,
because I come from a country that is in the middle of a conflict very intense
War, and
I have always seen
conflict, and I have always seen the world from the other perspective
from the perspective of the defeated people,
not from the perspective of the triumph.
It's not... I don't see this piece as an attack
I just think that it is a reminder.
I want to bring into the consensus
of : everything is well, we are all happy.
I want to bring a question mark at this disruption not only in the space, but also in time.
What is it before and what can happen after ?
There is a quote by a philosopher, Theodor Adorno
that I find amazing ; he said that
We should all see the world from the perspective of the victim
like Jewish people that were
killed with the head down in the Middle ages
So he wonders : what is the perspective of the person that is agonizing in this position ?
So I just wanted to get that perspective.
That is the world upside down, what it is like to see the world from down there.
So once the show is over there will be...
the piece will be sealed, the piece will remain under the floor
and it will be sealed.
So a permanent scar
will always be in the Turbine Hall, as some memory,
as a commemoration of all this life
that we don't recognize, that for us are like ghost anyway.
So in that in that way, the memory of the peace and the
presence of the people that we don't want to look at
The presence of this life that we don't want to acknowledge
to have pretty much as in character, just a vague memory.