Christian Boltanski Profile

Christian Boltanski (born 1944) is a French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker. He is the brother of Luc Boltanski and the partner of Annette Messager. He was born on September 6^th, 1994 in Paris. In 1996, he began creating mixed Medias and materials installations with light as the main idea/focus.

In 1986, Boltanski began creating mixed media/materials installations with light as essential concept. Tin boxes, altar-like construction of framed and manipulated photographs (e.g. Chases School, 1986–1987), photographs of Jewish schoolchildren taken in Vienna in 1931, used as a forceful reminder of mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, all those elements and materials used in his work are used in order to represent deep contemplation regarding reconstruction of past. While creating Reserve (exhibition at Basel, Museum Gegenwartskunst, 1989), Boltanski filled rooms and corridors with worn clothing items as a way of inciting profound sensation of human tragedy at concentration camps. As in his previous works, objects serve as relentless reminders of human experience and suffering. His piece, Monument (Odessa), uses six photographs of Jewish students in 1939 and lights to resemble Yahrzeit candles to honour and remember the dead. "My work is about the fact of dying, but it's not about the Holocaust itself."

Additionally, his enormous installation titled "No Man's Land" (2010) at the Park Avenue Armoury in New York, is a great example of how his constructions and installations trace the lives of the lost and forgotten.