To create an artwork from remembrance, to honour the dead, to stake out an area in the space of a place, a place for recall, an altar to remember once more. For the artist, the work, the installation, the film or the photos, all boils down to a simple objet d'art, a museographic relic halted in its function: the work goes substantially further, it is a vehicle for emotion, transcending its form to create a bond between people, to bring about a feeling, a shock, an awareness.

How does Christian Boltanski reinterpret the artwork's religious function but giving it both a sacred and subversive role? How is it possible to raise altars today without falling into commemorative convention? What are these altars and monuments which belong to no religion, which glorify no country and which, in the name of art alone, questions all of humanity?

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