Steel wire, oil paint
Regarding one of the causes of people trying to flee from Syria, Markus Daum becomes very concrete here – with a cross-shaped object made of wire and yellow paint. It bears the unsuspicious title “yellow cross”. Yellow cross is the name for the poison gas Lost, also known as mustard gas. Over the last 100 years killing by toxic contamination of the air we breathe has been regarded as a means of destruction of human beings in inaccessible areas that is as effective as it is vile. It is a military, particularly perfidious variant of well poisoning, only that now nobody can escape, because nobody can survive poisoned air. The effects of gas attacks are so devastating that such operations have been banned worldwide. Markus Daum’s Yellow Cross specifically addresses the current use of chemical weapons on the periphery of Europe. In Syria, almost all the warring parties involved seem to be using them. Since 2017/18, Markus Daum has set his otherwise isolated Yellow Cross into a larger, installation-conceptual context, which is designed to document the chronology of Syrian poison gas attacks.
Herbert Köhler