Work statement
In January 1998, during a short stopover in Madrid, Spain, I took the opportunity to visit the Museo Reina Sofía. It houses one of the most famous artworks of the 20th century: Guernica by Pablo Picasso.
When I arrived in front of the enormous painting (3.50 m by 7.80 m), several groups of mostly young people were gathered around, some standing, others sitting or lounging on the floor. They were absolutely silent: no chatting, not even whispering. They gazed at Guernica with reverence. While one can get an impression of the painting from books or images on the internet, the physical presence of the original is simply overwhelming. I spent half an hour in front of it, and so did many of the others. The amount of pain and despair expressed in this work is heartbreaking; its emotional impact is almost impossible to put into words.
When I left, I carried with me a sense of shared humanity, people my age from across the world, moved by the pain of strangers depicted in a painting. Now I would like to share this experience with five random people by cutting the admission ticket to the museum in pieces, each carrying a trace of that moment.
