Dimensions: image: 640 x 466 mm
Copyright: © Doris Salcedo | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Doris Salcedo, born in 1958, created "Shibboleth I" for the Tate Modern. It’s a large crack that splits the floor of the Turbine Hall. Editor: My first thought is: unsettling. It bisects the space, an uninvited rupture in what should be a solid foundation. Curator: Precisely. The work challenges the perceived stability of Western ideologies and highlights the experiences of marginalized groups. Salcedo’s installations are often rooted in social and political contexts. Editor: I see it as a raw wound, an exposed nerve. It makes me consider the fragility of things, and the scars that remain long after the initial damage. Curator: The artwork provokes questions about immigration, racism, and the divisions within society. Editor: Looking at it now, I'm thinking about how easily things can fall apart, literally and figuratively. How often do we ignore those hairline fractures in our own lives? Curator: Ultimately, Salcedo’s fissure is more than a crack; it’s a powerful statement. Editor: Absolutely, a stark reminder of the hidden tensions beneath the surface.
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Shibboleth I 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 II (Tate P20335), Shibboleth III (Tate P20336) and Shibboleth IV (Tate P20337), 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.
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