Crack at Tate Modern

Created by artist Doris Salcedo, the crack at Tate Modern is part of a giagantic art installation that will fascinate art lovers and visitors to the gallery until the beginning of April. Named Shibboleth, the crack runs the entire length of the enormous Turbine Hall that once housed the workings of the Bankside power station.

Not the first artist to use space or the distinct absence of an object to make her point, the crack is a unusual installation in the hall, as it encourages the viewer to look down rather than up into the vast space above. Full of political and racial motivation, many people are coming to look at the crack at Tate Modern simply to see how it has been done.

Running the entire length of the hall, and getting wider as it goes along, the crack is a huge crevice in the concrete floor that is ruptured by a steel mesh fence. Resisting and yet depending on the force exerted by the fence, the crack is a truly striking piece of work that immediately draws the eye down the length of the hall and into the abyss below.

Subverting questions about the grandeur of the hall, as the crack in effect points to the ruinous state of the floor, Shibboleth also takes a long hard look at the shakey foundations of Western notions of modernity that the gallery represents. Constructed at Tate Modern with an eye to capturing these kind of notions, the installation piece encourages visitors to ask what is wrong with our society, and how the cracks in our ethics, politics and society can be addressed.

The crack at Tate Modern also questions the nature of racism in the Western world, as this notion runs parrallel to the modern development of power. Shibboleth is a custom that tests whether newcomers are accepted into the existing group or not. Here, Shibboleth draws a large and cavernous line between those that are welcomed and those that are not.

Exposing a fracture in society and the nature of modernity itself, the crack at Tate Modern is at once a disturbing and inviting installation that will no doubt be attracting thousands of visitors until the end of its run.

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