PrintThe Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka
Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Miroslaw Balka is the tenth artist to create a work for The Unilever Series.
Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1958, Balka lives and works in Warsaw and Otwock. Including installation, sculpture and video, his works explore themes of personal history and common experience, drawing on his Catholic upbringing and the fractured history of Poland.
The latest commission in The Unilever Series How It Is by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka is a giant grey steel structure with a vast dark chamber, which in construction reflects the surrounding architecture - almost as if the interior space of the Turbine Hall has been turned inside out. Hovering somewhere between sculpture and architecture, on 2 metre stilts, it stands 13 metres high and 30 metres long. Visitors can walk underneath it, listening to the echoing sound of footsteps on steel, or enter via a ramp into a pitch black interior, creating a sense of unease.
Underlying this chamber is a number of allusions to recent Polish history – the ramp at the entrance to the Ghetto in Warsaw, or the trucks which took Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz, for example. By entering the dark space, visitors place considerable trust in the organisation, something that could also be seen in relation to the recent risks often taken by immigrants travelling. Balka intends to provide an experience for visitors which is both personal and collective, creating a range of sensory and emotional experiences through sound, contrasting light and shade, individual experience and awareness of others, perhaps provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue.
Free Admission