Obelisk of Tutankhamun

“With her obelisk, Rita McBride, in true Cologne fashion, brings together high culture and pop culture and contributes with brilliant ease to bringing a little structure into the chaos of everyday life.” This is what the Cultural Foundation of Sparda-Bank wrote in its motivation for awarding its prize to the artist Rita McBride and her gift to the City of Cologne (Sparda-Kunstpreis). Nevertheless, it took several years for the gift to be accepted and the work to be installed at the roundabout behind Cologne Main Station. At first the work was the subject of intense discussions; coordination processes between the various authorities subsequently led to further delays.

A few years earlier, the artist had installed a similar, albeit slightly taller obelisk as part of Emscherkunst 2010 in Essen on a bicycle path along the Emscher (also on NRW Skulptur: NRW-Skulptur.net). That one, too, took ad absurdum the original function of traditional obelisks which have been used since antiquity as symbols of power, landmarks, and structuring elements in urban planning.

Traditional form and new material meet in the “Carbon Obelisk,” as the column is not made of stone but of carbon-reinforced plastic with a black, diamond-patterned outer shell.

The artist herself, who teaches at Düsseldorf Kunstakademie, explained her idea as follows: The obelisk will “have the function of creating a conspicuous mark in space. It will imply an axis where none ever existed and direct the eye to a chaos of urban elements.” (Zitat Kölner Stadtanzeiger)