…the Columbian artist Doris Salcedo’s “Shibboleth,” at the Tate Museum, London, through April 5th. It’s a 548-foot installation piece that divides the floor of the Tate’s Turbine Hall. According to the artist it, “represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred.” Can the viewer make all of these connections from a crack in the floor? I await first hand accounts. Also of interest is Salcedo’s 2003 site-specific installation of chairs, created for the 8th Istanbul Biennial. She is an artist whose projects speak powerfully to the separation from, or containment of, memory and history. It is interesting to compare the monumentality of her work to that of Richard Serra. Where Serra’s work feels threatening, dangerous yet magnetic, Salcedo‘s large-scale works have the resonance of poetry.

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