Edmund de Waal: Library of Exile

Thought provoking installation at the British Museum by Edmund de Waal.

This piece looked lovely at the end of the Enlightenment Gallery and is a smooth porcelain room with over 2000 books written by people in exile from their homelands, arranged by country marked by porcelain book dividers. Within the room are also four new ceramic works by De Waal, beautiful calm pieces of ceramic arranged on shelves. You can enter the room and browse and read the books.  Around the outside are written the names of lost libraries from the Library of Alexandria to the Mosul University Library burnt in 2015.

Again, for me this was a chance to see an object which I’d previously missed. It had been on show in Venice during the Biennale which I went to however we were so busy on the Arsenale and Giardini we didn’t manage to go to look for this work. So another gap filled.

No end date announced.

Review

Evening Standard


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