In the Tate Modern gallery, they are exhibiting a large crack

London - Even an apparently ordinary crack can have artistic value, as visitors to the Tate Modern gallery in London discover. An installation featuring a crack stretching the full length of the 167-meter turbine hall has just been unveiled there.
    The extraordinary work titled Shibboleth 2007 was created by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo. It starts with a small crack that gradually widens and deepens as it crawls across the vast space. According to the author, it symbolizes racial hatred and societal division. "I always try to capture tragic moments in my work," she told BBC News online. The crack embodies borders and the experience of immigrants. "It is the experience of a person from a developing country when they find themselves in the heart of Europe," she added.
    She reportedly took more than a year to create the work, and its installation in the gallery took five weeks. However, she refused to reveal how it was made. "It is not important how it was created, but its meaning," she stated, adding that the crack is said to be bottomless, just like humanity.
    The suspicion that the work was merely an optical illusion was resolutely denied by the gallery director. It will be on display for six months, after which the artistic crack will be filled. "There will be a scar left behind, and that will remain," the director declared. The gallery staff will until then warn visitors of the danger of tripping and falling into the gap.