Doris Salcedo

18 Pages·2014·3.69 MB·English

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Doris Salcedo
Edited by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, with an
introduction by Madeleine Grynsztejn and
contributions by Elizabeth Adan, Katherine Brinson,
Helen Molesworth, and Franklin Sirmans
Doris Salcedo is a comprehensive survey of one
of today’s most important international artists.
Salcedo, who lives and works in Bogotá, produces
meticulously handcrafted sculptures and installations
that address the question of what happens to
people impacted by systemic violence. Her work
is grounded in rigorous fieldwork, including
testimonies of victims who have suffered loss and
trauma due to war. With an elegant sensibility that
balances the gravitas of her subjects, her works—
D
often made of everyday materials such as furniture,
o
clothing, and other vernacular objects—bear witness
r
i to conflict and suggest avenues for a collective
s
S Doris Salcedo mourning which, in the artist’s words, “attempts to
a give back the sense, meaning, and form that violence
l took away from its victims.” The volume’s essays
c
e provide new scholarship on Salcedo’s aesthetic
d
strategies and influences, her philosophic approach
o
to representation and metaphor, her reinterpretation
of the Duchampian readymade, as well as her poetic
constructions and evocations of religious themes.
The book includes more than one hundred color
illustrations highlighting sculptures and installations
from Salcedo’s thirty-year career, including many
site-specific, large-scale public works from the last
fifteen years.
JULIE RODRIGUES WIDHOLM is curator at the
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
MADELEINE GRYNSZTEJN is the Pritzker
Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art
Chicago.
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ISBN: 978-0-226-24458-7 ica
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PRINTED IN CHINA go
DORIS SALCEDO
Edited by Julie Rodrigues Widholm and Madeleine Grynsztejn
With contributions by Elizabeth Adan, Katherine Brinson,
Helen Molesworth, and Doris Salcedo
A mountain of chairs piled between build- Published to accompany Salcedo’s first retro-
ings. Shoes sewn behind animal membranes spective exhibition and the American de-
into a wall. A massive crack running through but of her major work Plegaria muda, Doris
the floor of Tate Modern. Powerful works Salcedo is the most comprehensive survey of
like these by sculptor Doris Salcedo evoke her sculptures and installations to date. In
the significance of bearing witness and pro- addition to featuring new contributions by
cesses of collective healing. Salcedo, who respected scholars and curators, the book
lives and works in Bogotá, roots her art includes over one hundred color illustra-
in Colombia’s social and political land- tions highlighting many pieces from Salce-
scape—including its long history of civil do’s twenty-five-year career. Offering fresh
wars—with an elegance and poetic sensi- perspectives on a vital body of work, Do-
bility that balances the gravitas of her sub- ris Salcedo is a testament to the power of
jects. Her work is undergirded by intense one of today’s most important international
fieldwork, including interviews with people artists.
who have suffered loss and endured trauma
from political violence. In recent years, Sal-
Julie Rodrigues Widholm is curator at the Mu-
cedo has become increasingly interested in
seum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Madeleine
the universality of these experiences and
Grynsztejn is the Pritzker Director of the Museum
has expanded her research to Turkey, It-
of Contemporary Art Chicago.
aly, Great Britain, and the United States.
87/8 x 11, 240 pages, For a review copy or other publicity inquiries, To place orders in the United States or
105 color plates please contact: Rose Rittenhouse, Promotions Canada, please contact your local University
Manager, University of Chicago Press, 1427 of Chicago Press sales representative or
ISBN 13: 978-0-226-24458-7
East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. contact the University of Chicago Press by
Publication Date: March 2015 Email: [email protected]; phone at 1-800-621-2736 or by fax at
Cloth $50.00 / £35.00 Phone: [phone]; Fax [phone].
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Seeing Things that is likely to become increasingly at issue in con-
temporary art history and that is central to the work
of Doris Salcedo. In examining practices such as
Elizabeth Adan
Salcedo’s, which emerged at the moment, in the late
1980s and 1990s, often aligned with a historical shift
to contemporaneity,5 and which have since contin-
Over the course of its relatively short existence, ued to play a role in contemporary art, how does one
contemporary art history has grown exponentially actually locate the contemporaneity of such prac-
as a field. At the same time, it has become an object tices? To put it another way, how does one contend
of study, with considerable attention focused on the with an artist whose work has been contemporary
incongruities that can seem to permeate, and poten- for, say, twenty-plus years?
tially even destabilize, the field.1 Perhaps most obvi- In Salcedo’s case, the subjects that she addresses,
ous is the apparent contradiction between present as well as the materials and techniques that she uses,
and past implied in the very phrase “contemporary continue from her early projects in the late 1980s
art history,” along with related concerns that art and and 1990s into the present day. But, again, how does
cultural production of the current moment are gen- one account for the span of contemporaneity in
erated at an ever more rapid pace, while the work Salcedo’s work? Does one consign the earlier work
of researching and writing about these objects of to the past and historicize it, reserving the word
study occurs more slowly.2 In addition, some authors “contemporary” for the chronologically more recent
have questioned the feasibility of what for many work? Does one assert that the contemporaneity
remains a central objective, to resist and intervene of certain developments extends well beyond the
in the seemingly all-encompassing market forces moment of their emergence? Or, does one trace the
associated with the global proliferation of capitalism nascent history of certain concerns that emerged
and its attendant visual forms, in what Guy Debord during the period termed “contemporary” with an
has termed “the society of the spectacle.”3 At least eye to the perhaps subtle, but no less consequential,
one further set of potentially conflicting concerns shifts one might find within such concerns since
has also shaped art and cultural production since the their initial development?
postwar era: tensions around the viability of repre- It is a combination of these latter two approaches
sentation, especially in the face of theories of unrep- that I take in this examination of the artist’s sculp-
resentability in art and culture that have developed tures and installations. For more than twenty years,
with the spread of political violence and terror in Salcedo has investigated the individual experiences,
the world. social conditions, and lasting impacts of political
Together, these manifold issues could suggest violence and terror, as well as the challenges that
that the field of contemporary art history is riddled such matters pose for visual art and representation.
with conflicts and inconsistencies. More important, She is especially known for projects that explore the
though, as several authors have noted, such debates ways in which, as a result of such violence, victims
point to determined efforts to comprehend, or at vanish, leaving a profound absence and sense of
least indicate, the full complexity of visual practices instability in the world; above all, the artist’s works
in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. have insistently attempted to counter these effects.
Indeed, for a number of authors, these issues, with As has been widely noted, however, nowhere in her
their apparent incongruities and potential contra- work does the artist depict, document, or otherwise
dictions, in fact constitute the field of contemporary include pictorial imagery of victims or their expe-
art history.4 riences of violence. Instead, at the same time that
There is also another matter to consider, one Salcedo has committed to making victims and their
that may initially appear to be relatively minor but experiences present and evident, she has placed
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Untitled, 1986
Steel shelving, steel cot, plastic dolls, rubber, wax,
and animal fiber
73½ × 947⁄8 × 181⁄8 in. (187 × 241 × 46 cm)
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Untitled (and detail, left), 1989–90
Steel bed frames, plaster, cotton shirts, and animal fiber
Two parts, each: 717⁄8 × 35¼ × 5½ in. (182.6 × 89.5 × 14 cm)
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La Casa Viuda I (and detail, right), 1992–94
Wooden door, wooden chair, clothing, and thread
2213⁄16 × 23½ × 153⁄16 in. (57.8 × 59.7 × 38.7 cm)
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