Collection

Untitled (Arbeit Macht Frei) is a replica of the notorious sign from the Auschwitz concentration camp—“work makes you free”—a saying whose grotesque irony has come to symbolise the horror of the Holocaust. The sign over the camp gates was cut into three pieces when a Swedish neo-Nazi ordered it to be stolen in 2009, and this is how the artist has chosen to recreate it. The idea to replicate the defiled sign—a time-honoured memento of one of the worst events in history—is a consciously provocative statement. Its aim is to revive the memory of the Holocaust, which could fade because is it is only kept alive through routine ceremonial commemoration