Miroslaw Balka (b.1958) How It Is (2009)
10th Unilever Series
Tate Modern Turbine Hall
It may seem a bit old-hattish to mention this mid-way through 2010, but encountering this sculpture left me both physically goose-pimpled and mentally wobbly, and for that, it deserves a mention.
How It Is consisted of a Kraken sized black crate on stilts (13 metres high and 20 metres long) to be entered via an equally dramatic ramp. Once inside, the self-imposed challenge was to walk through a soupy- thick darkness and touch the opposite wall. There is a sense of spacial manipulation that is ideal for an investigation into the oppressive effects of certain types of architecture on the psyche. The ramp of this ‘box of darkness’ is an allusion to the ramp at the entrance of the Ghetto in Warsaw, the crate itself possibly to the railed 'cattle cars' that transported Jewish prisoners to concentration camps. I only learnt of this subtext after the fact and it certainly did supplement my post-experiential perspective, which had fastened on notions of a psychoanalytical ‘return to the womb’. Entering into such a black-hole of darkness was not only disorientating but also left one with sense of lost physical boundaries. If not for my friend clinging to me as we made our way to the other side, I would no doubt have abandoned ship almost immediately.
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