José Damasceno: Plot review surreal digging into hidden, disused spaces

Holborn library, London
The Brazilian artist has transfigured this quiet place of reading with an intervention of subtle imaginative power

Pity our libraries, hit hard by austerity. Cut taxes, close a few more. Who cares?

Step forward Artangel, the public art agency with an almost mystical belief in the power of place. Artists working with Artangel have, over the years, tranformed sites from a south London flat to a field at Orgreave into vivid theatres of memory. Now it is the turn of Holborn library in central London to have its unconcscious excavated. Brazilian artist José Damasceno transfigures this quiet place of reading and study with an intervention of appropriately subtle imaginative power.

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