I have recently visited Doris Salcedo's 'Shibboleth' (known among visitors as 'the crack') at the Tate Modern. 'A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group. ‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself.' says the text on the wall of the Turbine Hall.
The Crack represents the division between the haves and have nots, between oppressed and oppressor and, if you like me choose to look at it from above, between those who 'get' it and those who 'don't'.
The Prime minister said recently inflation must be kept down - and called for wage restraint among public sector workers. In today's England nurses, teachers and social workers will soon join those whose houses have been repossessed in their fall onto the wrong side of the crack.
