The Parthenon of Books: A Tale of 100,000 banned books

The definition of art has changed throughout history, it has been always used as a powerful weapon to express and protest. In the era of social movements and revolt, art has always reacted against taboos, bans, violence, injustice and inequalities.

One of the best examples of this silent and unique protest can be seen in an exhibition documenta 14, Germany. Marta Minujín, an Argentinian artist has created an incredible replica of Greek temple, the Parthenon. She has used 100,000 banned books to construct a replica of the Parthenon in Athens on a Nazi book-burning site in Kassel, Germany. The incredible replica is called The Parthenon of Books. The Greek Parthenon was originally the temple of goddess Athena, it was constructed in 447 BC on the hill of the Acropolis.

The Parthenon of Books is a symbol of protest against banning of literature, its aim is to provoke debate on censorship. The 74-year-old artist requested students from Kassel University for drawing up a list of 170 banned books, and she asked the public for help in gathering 100,000 copies of them.

The installation is the main attraction of the Documenta 14, 2017 exhibition in Kassel, which runs for 100 days. The monument is comprised of 170 vintage and contemporary titles that have been banned somewhere around the world, including Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl and J K Rowling’s Harry Potter. The replica is constructed with metal tubes and the books are covered with plastics.

With the piece of art, the venue is also very important, in 1941, the Fridericianum- which was being used as a library at the time was engulfed in flames during an Allied bombing attack, a collection of about 350,000 books was lost. On May 19, 1933, some 2,000 books were burned by the Nazis during the so-called ‘Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist’, says the website.

Marta had built her first piece in 1983 with 25,000 books banned by Argentina’s military junta in a square in Buenos Aires.

The exhibition, Parthenon of Books which runs for 100 days is going to end on 17 September. Here is a video of the exhibition shared on YouTube.

With inputs from Supriya Nidhi