Global Photography

One of the most impressive sights during my short trip to London has to be “Shibboleth” at the Tate Modern. Shibboleth is a 167m that has been installed in length of the Turbine Hall, starting as a hairline crack in the concrete floor and widening to a few inches in breadth and a depth of perhaps half a meter.

“It represents borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred.”

Neither the artist, Doris Salcedo, from Colombia, nor the Tate management would say exactly how it had been created. The gallery declined to disclose whether Salcedo had drilled down into the floor or whether the crack had been created by digging into a “false” floor that sits on top of the original. A spokeswoman said that Shibboleth had been created by the artist “opening up the floor” and inserting a concrete cast of a Colombian rockface.

“It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe. For example, the space which illegal immigrants occupy is a negative space. And so this piece is a negative space.”

According to the artist it is a statement about racism, with the crack representing the gap between white Europeans and the rest of humanity. Sir Nicholas Serota, the Tate director, said: “There is a crack, there is a line, and eventually there will be a scar. It will remain as a memory of the work and also as a memorial to the issues Doris touches on.”