STATEMENT: R.I.P. Christian Boltanski

A few days ago, I read Hans Ulrich Obrist’s tribute to Christian Boltanski and could not believe that he passed away on 14/7/21, at the age of 76. He was the second person after Zaha Hadid, in our field, that I felt we had a close personal relationship. It was as if I had lost a person very close to me. The feeling is really real. And this not only because I love his work, in the last five years I had seen many of his works and different places in Paris (from the Maison Rouge and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, to the Marian Goodman Gallery and his retrospective at Cente Pompidou, but mainly his personality. I was meeting him very often at Marian Goodman Bookstore in Marais, I still remember that night that he inaugurated a series of his own multiples and when I told him that I knew his work, he replied that these are completely unknown, he did them at his 16 he they were completely autobiographical, then he began to guide me and analyze his works and thoughts. I had asked him for an interview and he had , but it got lost through the bad communication with the Gallery people (frequent in Paris)- bitterness(?) Bitterness, complaint and anticipation, always leaped to the back of my mind the idea that we will talk in the post-covid era, when conditions were improving as that was one of the big obstacles, but as the Eastern religions very wisely say “When people make plans God laughs”. Efi Michalarou

Photo: Christian Boltanski, Animitas, 2014, Installation at Atacama Desert-Chile