meanwhile are warned not to trip on the crack . Tate director Nicholas Serota insisted the work was no optical illusion . `` This sculpture has been made in the most painstaking , meticulous way by Doris and her team before it was slowly inserted into the Turbine Hall , '' he told the Press Association . `` It has taken five weeks of work here with very considerable disruption to the hall . It 's not an illusion - it 's there , it 's real . `` From the Tate 's point of view , there were only two questions : could we realize it in the way Doris envisaged ? And once the piece was created , would it damage the structural integrity of the building forever ? `` The answer to the first was yes , and to the second was no . '' He declined to elaborate further . The installation will be removed next April by filling in the crack . Serota said : `` There is a crack , there is a line , and eventually there will be a scar and that scar will remain . It will remain as a memory
LONDON , England -- A Colombian sculptor has created a mystery at London 's Tate Modern gallery by refusing to reveal how she seemingly managed to crack open a concrete floor . `` Shibboleth '' is Colombian artist Doris Salcedo 's first public commission in the United Kingdom . The work by Doris Salcedo begins as a hairline crack then widens and deepens as it snakes across the full 167 meters -LRB- 548 feet -RRB- of the former power station 's Turbine Hall . Salcedo said `` Shibboleth , '' a statement about racism , took her more than a year to make but has revealed little else about its construction . She apparently created it elsewhere and spent the past five weeks installing it in the Tate , on the south bank of the River Thames . She refused to say how she managed seemingly to crack open a concrete floor . `` What is important is the meaning of the piece . The making of it is not important , '' she said . Asked how deep the crack goes , she replied : `` It 's bottomless . It 's as deep as humanity . '' Visitors