Dimensions: image: 640 x 483 mm
Copyright: © Doris Salcedo | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: So, this is Shibboleth IV, by Doris Salcedo, held at the Tate. There's just...this long, jagged crack in the floor. What do you see in this piece? Curator: The fissure presents a compelling rupture in the visual field. Note the dramatic diagonal thrust against the orthogonal grid of the architecture. How does this stark contrast generate meaning for you? Editor: I guess it’s the unexpectedness of it. This smooth floor suddenly broken. It feels violent, but also deliberate. Curator: Precisely. The artist is manipulating the viewer's spatial expectations. Consider the texture of the crack itself - how does its roughness contrast with the polished surface of the floor? Editor: It's like a wound, almost. The way the light catches the jagged edges... I never thought about a floor as having texture, but this changes things. Curator: Indeed. The sculpture’s form evokes philosophical ideas about divisions and disruptions. Editor: I'll definitely look at floors differently now. Thanks!
Comments
Join the conversation
Join millions of artists and users on Artera today and experience the ultimate creative platform.
Shibboleth IV is a medium-size digital photograph by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo that depicts the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern, London, with a long narrow crack running along its floor. The print is part of a portfolio of four photographs each showing different views of the same scene, including Shibboleth I (Tate P20334), Shibboleth II (Tate P20335) and Shibboleth III (Tate P20336), and the portfolio as a whole is number one in an edition of forty-five plus ten artist’s proofs. The photographs were made as part of Salcedo’s 2007 installation project for the Unilever Series at Tate Modern, also titled Shibboleth, which involved the artist creating a deep fissure in the floor of the Turbine Hall that stretched from one end of the gallery to the other, into which she placed a concrete cast of a Colombian rock face with a wire chain-link fence set into it. These photographs are digital composites made up of images of the Turbine Hall seen from four different angles and photographs that Salcedo took of a small-scale model of the cracked floor that she made in her studio in Bogotá, Colombia.
CollectMore like this
