Hisham Matar’s autobiographic book The Return talks about his father’s absence.
The image above show the Voided Void at the end of the Axis of Holocaust in Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin.
Matar quotes Aristoteles: The theory that the void exists involves the existence of place: for one would define void as place bereft of body.
Right now, the museum is being prepared for a new standard exhibition, and hence almost completely void.
Matar continues to reflect about Aristoteles. He adds: He says nothing of time here, and time is surely part of it all, of how we try to accommodate the absence. […]. Only time can hope to fill the void. The body of my father is gone, but his place is here and occupied by something that cannot just be called memory.
A second accessible void in the Libeskind building is the Memory Void, containing Menashe Kadishman’s installation Shalekhet (Fallen Leaves).
Matar concludes this reflection: What is extraordinary is that, given everything that has happened, the natural alignment of the heart remains towards the light.
The Inner Frame 