Envisioned as a three-and-a-half-meter wide “wound” within the landscape, Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg’s powerful monument to those lost in the 2011 Utøya terror attacks has won Oslo’s July 22 Memorial competition.
“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,” described Dahlberg.
The excavation will slice through the top of the headland at the Sørbråten site, to below the water line and extends to each side. Unable to reach the end of Utøya’s headland, visitors will be led through a forested pathway, a “contemplative journey” that will ultimately lead them underground to a “dramatic edge of the cut itself.” Here, the void will reveal an untouchable stone wall that frames inscriptions of each victim’s name.
