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Esther Shalev-Gerz

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Esther Shalev-Gerz

(Born 1948, works in Paris)

Les Inséparables, 2000–2008

Double-faced clock

183 x 296 x 35 cm

With support from Westerstrand Urfabrik

Since the 1980s, Esther Shalev-Gerz has explored how memory and collective identities are constructed in relation to time and history. When she was invited to Wanås to create a new work for the 2008 exhibition Loss, she was inspired by the old farm bell from 1756, which for centuries rang to tell the farm’s workers when it was time to work, pray, or eat. She chose to continue this tradition through Les Inséparables, a three-meter-wide clock on the façade of the Art Gallery, featuring two intertwined clock faces. The double clock creates a temporal structure that runs both backward and forward, meeting in the now. “The hands move in different directions and almost touch in the common area in the middle. This area is the most exciting, the space in-between. This is where reality can be changed. And this is where, just like in our imaginations and fairytales, time doesn’t exist…,” says Shalev-Gerz.