Shibboleth

Shibboleth was the title of a temporary art installation placed by the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo in the Tate Modern in 2007. The work took the form of a long crack in the floor. Work Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo was a £300,000 installation, the eighth commission in the "Unilever Series" (sponsored by Unilever), which takes place annually in the Turbine Hall, the main entrance lobby of Tate Modern in London. Salcedo's installation took the form of a 548-foot (167-metre) long, meandering crack in the floor of the Turbine Hall, a hairline crack at one end which expanded to a few inches of width and around two feet of depth at the other. The crack was made by opening up the floor and then inserting a cast from a Colombian rock face. A Tate spokesperson said, "She’s not specifying how it’s been done. What she wants is for people to think about what’s real and what’s not." Salcedo said of the work: