Tate Turbine Hall host colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s work “Shibboleth” from 9 october to 6 april 2008. We can find a lot of stuff in that fracture.
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.
Doris Salcedo – Shibboleth 2007 – Tate Gallery
