On Dahlberg’s “Memory Wound”
I like to create things with words – landscapes of the mind. Sometimes they are soothing – like undulating hills stretching off into the distance. At other times they are spiky and dangerous – like jagged rocks lashed by an angry sea. I have occasionally tried to do the same thing with paint (with limited success) and never with clay. What about creating art from a landscape, though?
When Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg, went to visit the site of Norway’s Utoya massacre, he noticed that his feelings were different in the now abandoned buildings and the woodland surrounding them. The buildings seemed to hold the horror they had witnessed within their walls, whereas the natural environment seemed to have already begun its own process of healing by regrowth. His concept for a memorial to those who died combines both inner and outer space, and will be achieved by slicing the island in two:
Image: gizmodo.com
After walking through a contemplative path in the forest, visitors will descend through a tunnel to the viewing window you see on the right of the picture. Through it they will be able to see, read, but not touch the names of those who died in the massacre. They will be forever ‘out of reach’ in the artist’s own words:
Across this channel, on the flat vertical stone surface of the other side, the names of those who died will be visibly inscribed in the stone. The names will be close enough to see and read clearly — yet ultimately out of reach. The cut is an acknowledgement of what is forever irreplaceable.
Using the landscape (which will heal itself and change over time) to create a permanent memorial to the people lost in this way is an audaciously brilliant act of commemoration. Sometimes words alone are not enough…
