Misc: Guilty secret inspires art

The Telegraph, UK (Roya Nikkhah)

British artist Andy Holden is to reveal how he stole a piece of the Egypt pyramids in a new exhibition at the Tate Britain in London.

The artist's guilty secret began with a seemingly innocent trip to Egypt.

Accompanying his father, who was there on business, Andy, then 12, was taken to the Great Pyramid of Giza: the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still surviving – relatively intact – and the oldest and largest of the pyramids at the Giza Necropolis.

"When we arrived at the pyramids, unthinkingly I broke off a lump of stone from the side of the Great Pyramid in Giza," said Mr Holden. "I got home and put it on a shelf in my room alongside a collection of other souvenirs I had as a kid, but when my parents found out, they were furious and it ended up becoming this terrible guilt object.

"I didn't tell anyone else what I had done, but it had been haunting me in the last few years, so I thought I'd try to undo the guilt by travelling back to Egypt and putting it back in its original spot."

"Consumed" by guilt, Mr Holden's attempts at reparation didn't end there: he also created a "colossal" replica of the rock. The sculpture is now featuring in a new exhibition at Tate Britain in London.