DEATHGATE.
INTERVIEW WITH
DAN ELBORNE
Paweł Sawicki, Memoria editor-in-chief
Deathgate is a ceramic installation artwork by Dan Elborne comprising 1.3 million handmade pieces, each representing one person detained in the Auschwitz network of concentration camps.
The work is presented as two separate beds of ceramic ‘stones’. One bed contains 1.1 million pieces, and the other; 200,000 pieces. This gives a direct visual reference to the number of deaths (1.1 million) among 1,3 million deported to Auschwitz.
Aesthetically, the installation is reminiscent of the railway leading through the main entrance of Auschwitz II, also known as 'the death gate’. Various elements of the work, including the colour ratio of chosen clay types and the size of the ceramic ‘stones’ directly respond to personal impressions and reference images taken while the author visited the Auschwitz Memorial in January 2016.
As the artist says: 'In no way does the work aim to wholly represent what was experienced by those victimised, but instead, references the history from an overarching and reflective standpoint. It is by attempting representation that I wish to invoke an imaginative sense of totality.’
Paweł Sawicki spoke to Dan Elborne about the „Deathgate” project:
Every person who visits the Auschwitz Memorial has a different place, a story or a moment which made a personal impact. For you it seems to be the railing inside the former Birkenau camp. Why is that?
I think it's because it speaks quite profoundly to the prisoner experience as well as the sheer scale of the Auschwitz network of camps. It is terrifying to know that the vast majority of Auschwitz detainees arrived by train, many of who were selected for immediate extermination once out of the freight cars. The industrial, mechanical and systematic nature of the train line, with the camp designed around it, quickly became a prime example for me of what was perpetrated there.
Now people can see the end result of your work - Deathgate. I wonder - how such a concept begins in an artistic mind?
I had the idea while travelling on a train between two artist residencies in France. I had recently completed a project reflecting on a visit to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany years earlier. The idea for a project about Auschwitz came like a wave.
Shortly after this, I visited the Auschwitz camps to decide whether I would go ahead with the work and to confirm many of its aesthetic details. Being on site charged me to respond through art practice. Elements of time, labor and scale felt like the most effective ways for me to reference the personal effects that visit had on me.
Photo: James Green