On the sign over the gate at the entrance of Auschwitz, the word ‘Arbeit’ has been replaced by ‘Kunst’. The suggestion is that, just as work did not make anyone free ‘there’, so art will not make anyone free ‘here’. This is a bitter joke about the situation of the artist. In this gesture there is no disdaining of history; on the other hand, there is the use of a signifier from history in another context