My installation at the Gauforum intends to intervene (symbolically) the relic from a dark chapter in German history. As the architecture serves as a reminder for the events that transpired, I intend to amplify what it did and what it means, by placing another symbol in the middle of that construction. A “double edge razor blade”-shaped installation of grass. The blade symbolizes the divide, the slicing of the nation that it caused. The central part of the razor blade is a fountain that holds a statue of Mary smack middle of it. Mary, the eternal “mother” cries at how her child, the humanity mutilates itself. 

As Hitler’s regime did what it did and gave birth to the darkest chapter of German history, it left behind a nation severely severed and divided I its thoughts, structure and existence. And as the nation finally woke from the slumber and hypnosis it dwelled in, it realized (or at least, most of it did) the error of its ways. But dark as it maybe, it is history that shaped the nation into what it is, for better or for worse. And the relics of that Dark Age, no matter how tormenting they become, or how difficult they become to bear, should never be dispensed with. At the very least, they serve as a constant reminder of how bad a turn events can take. Heed to those reminders and you just might catch the next catastrophe in the bud.

Now, if the mere presence of these buildings do not serve as a sufficient reminder for you to change your ways, let me accentuate it a bit. Let me just put a giant razor in there as a symbolic representation of the event that severed and mutilated humanity at such a gigantic level.

And events of such magnitude are incomplete if symbols of biblical context are all but absent from them. For that reason, I place the statue of Mary in the middle of the blade, with fonts streaming down her face, adding to the pool around her. Almost as if making a statement (whether you are religious or not), that “oh humanity! What have you become? How astray can you go? Don’t you see that the mother’s crying? Forever.”

My intervention (this installation) aims to induce thoughts of reconciliation, without inducing guilt, directly into the minds of its beholders. And if it successfully does that, no matter with how little a frequency, I would consider my dues paid.