Norway has unveiled the designs for a memorial to remember the victims of a 2011 bombing and mass shooting that killed 77 people in Oslo and Utoya, a small island outside of the capital. It's nothing short of powerful.
Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg presented a proposal to cut a small gap through the headland near the island of Utoya , a "memory wound", he described in his artist statement.
CORRECTION: Dahlberg's memorial will be situated on Sorbraten, a peninsula not far from Utoya island itself.
My concept for the Memorial Sørbråten proposes a wound or a cut within nature itself. It reproduces the physical experience of taking away, reflecting the abrupt and permanent loss of those who died. The cut will be a three-and-a-half-meters-wide excavation. It slices from the top of the headland at the Sørbråten site, to below the water line and extends to each side. This void in the landscape makes it impossible to reach the end of the headland.
But the most moving part of the memorial might be how it will memorialize the victims.
Across this channel, on the flat vertical stone surface of the other side, the names of those who died will be visibly inscribed in the stone. The names will be close enough to see and read clearly — yet ultimately out of reach. The cut is an acknowledgement of what is forever irreplaceable."
Dahlberg's plans also call for a second memorial in Oslo using materials excavated from this site . His plans were unanimously chosen by the art selection committee. "It is capable of conveying and confronting the trauma and loss that the 22 July events resulted in in a daring way. The proposal is radical and brave, and evokes the tragic events in a physical and direct manner," they wrote on their official site.
On July 22, 2011, gunman Anders Breivik detonated a car bomb in downtown Oslo, killing eight people. He then drove onto the island of Utoya and gunned down dozens of attendees at a youth camp. The event was called the worst massacre in Norway's history since the Second World War.
You can see more photos of both memorials on Bustler's site. The memorials are scheduled to be completed by July 22, 2015, the fourth anniversary of the tragedy.
