Memorial to Prisoners
with Emilia Kabakov
YEAR: 2010
CATALOGUE NUMBER: 186
PROVENANCE
Collection of the Skulpturenmuseum (Museum of Sculpture) Glaskasten Marl, permanent loan of Freundeskreis Habakuk zur Förderung des Skulpturenmuseums Glaskasten Marl (Habakuk – Society for the Promotion of the Museum of Sculpture, Glaskasten Marl).
NOTES
See CRB, no. 126, pp. 494–497.
EXHIBITIONS
Skulpturenpark (sculpture garden) Marl, Germany
Permanent installation since July 2, 2010 (there referred to as Gefangenendenkmal)
CONCEPT OF THE INSTALLATION
The memorial may be erected either within the boundaries of an existing cemetery for prisoners of the concentration camps or it may be the central part of a memorial complex. It represents a square area made of simple, unpolished stones. In the center of the area is a cement tile with a square opening in the middle. Small branches with green leaves protrude up through the wrought-iron grate covering the opening. The small square must be surrounded by a low parapet with two stone benches. If you walk up close to the opening and look carefully, you can see that down below, under the grate, there is a tree. The metaphor, the image, becomes clear immediately: the tree, even though it is imprisoned “underground,” is still striving toward the sky, toward freedom.
A required part of the memorial must be large trees clustered around the square on all sides. Then the conceptual contrast of the trees growing in freedom and their “imprisoned” sister will “work” particularly well.
