In an Austrian concentration camp, the ghosts of the deportees summoned by Chiharu Shiota

Two hundred and eighty kilometers of red threads, forming a web of memory in a 120-meter-long gallery dug in the depths of the Salzkammergut, in Austria, during the Second World War. This impressive device brings art into the Ebensee concentration camp, an annex to that of Mauthausen. The objective is to “bring the public closer to the inexpressible” and maintain the memory, a “balancing act” which must be done according to the memorial with respect for the victims of Nazism.

When we enter the tunnel dug under the rock by the mainly Polish, Soviet and Hungarian prisoners, we are struck by the multitude of red ropes which connect the immense robes. This installation by the Japanese Chiharu Shiota, 51, can be discovered until September 30 in the Salzkammergut, the central lake region elected European Capital of Culture in 2024.

The clothes that float in the air like ghosts are used “like empty bodies”, symbolizing the “absence” of the deportees, a “visible existence, but without anyone”. The work is called Where are we now? We find the red threads dear to the artist, a color associated with blood or destiny, she told AFP in the humid and cold atmosphere of the underground. She did not know about this place before being invited to exhibit there but has lived in Germany for 26 years and became interested in the concentration camps.

Originally from a power allied to Hitler, Chiharu Shiota regrets that Japan has not done the same work of remembrance, according to comments reported by the daily Die Presse.

In Ebensee, in the native country of Adolf Hitler annexed by the Third Reich in 1938, the Nazis were to carry out research on missiles from 1943. The project never came to the heart of this gallery of impressive dimensions, the one of the few transformed into a memorial and museum, in 1988. “It is proof of the forced labor” of 27,000 prisoners, of whom more than 8,000 died in inhumane conditions, recalls Wolfgang Quatember, the director of the premises, according to whom the art can “make the unspeakable tangible for people.”

An opera has already been performed between these dark walls. It was composed in the Theresienstadt ghetto, north of Prague, where Jews were detained during the Second World War. Respectful approaches therefore in a place steeped in history, notes the manager, in front of the work of Chiharu Shiota. “I had never dared to enter before because it seemed oppressive to me,” Monika Fritsch, a 60-year-old content creator who came to the inauguration, told AFP. But this installation allowed me to take the step.”