The Materiality of Mourning (Exhibition Catalog) [1. ed.] 9781891771699, 9780300222517

Citation preview

Doris Salcedo

The Materiality of Mourning

Mary Schneider Enriquez With contribut ion s by Doris Salcedo and Narayan Khandekar

Harvard Art Mus eums Cambr id ge, Mass. Distributed by Yale University Press New Haven and London

Conte nts

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Directo r's Fore w ord

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Ack now ledg m ent s

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Lende rs t o t he Exhibition

xv ii 1

Fro m th e Arti st lntrod ucti on

- 15

In Co nt ext: Vi o lence and Contemporary

Art in Colombia

- 31

Salcedo's I nfluen ces : Arti sts , Works , Practices

- 49

Th e Six Vi sual Str ate gies

119

Orga nic and Ephem eral: Salc edo 's Recent Material Challenges

137

Coda

141

lnh ere nt Vi ce and the Shi p of Th eseus

155

A rtis t Biog rap hy & Exhibition History

161

Works in th e Exhibiti on

163

Bibli og rap hy

171

Index

Narayan Khandekar

Dir ector 's Foreword

Since reo pen in g in 20 14, th e Harvard Art Museums have prominently featured worka bf co ntemporar y artis t s fr om around th e world. Through both acquisitions and exhibltlon , we have bro ug ht atte nti on t o an exciting roster of international artists-Rebecca Horn, Al Welwel. Carlos Amorales, Shahryar Nashat , Je sse Aron Green, Kerry James Marshall, and more- whoea diverse wor ks have add ed new and important dimensions to our modern and contempor program . Dor is Salce do: The Materiality of Mourning continues this international focus, showcae a major artist fr o m t he glo bal south . Salcedo has lo ng bee n int ere sted in creating works that respond to the violence that roi led her nativ e Colombia. However, since gain ing wide acclaim in the 1990s, she has broad her approach t o add ress both past and present violence faced by societies around the w Today, the esca lat ion of ci vil viol ence in the United States as weil as abroad makes her- ------~".,. m ore reso nant and her art ist ic project all the more urgent. These socio politi ca l con cerns are key to everything the artist makes, and her practlce founde d on th e perso nal st o rie s she hears firsthand from those affected by violence. Yet Mary Schneider Enriqu ez beauti fully reveals in this volume , Salcedo unites a desire to mourn a acknow ledge t he for got te n w ith a deep commitment to challenge and extend the boundar of t he mate rials she uses in doing so. Drawing on more than a decade 's worth of conversatl w ith t he art ist and visits t o her Bogota studio , Schneider Enriquez demonstrates how importa it is to view Salce do 's oe uvr e not j ust through a particular theoretical lens-violence stud or trauma and memor y st ud ies, for example- but for the ways she engages with the tradltlo of scul pt ure as a m edium . Exhibit ing Salcedo's art here at the Harvard Art Museums allows for an even richer dlscu s ICHt of how she res pond s t o and departs from sculptural conventions, particularly of the postwat period and later. The museum s possess an especially strong coilection of 20th-century sculptu sig nif ica nt hold ings of works by Constantin Brancusi , Amedeo Modigliani, Henry Moor e, and Davi d Smi t h, as w eil as rec ent additions of Sol LeWitt , Richard Serra, Robert Gober, Rachel Harrison , Mo na Hat o um , and Rac hel Whiteread . In this context, the exhibition will no doubt advance gene ral scholarly deb at e about the place of sculpture in modern and contemporary art, but at the same t ime w ill hi g hlight Salcedo' s path - breaking contr ibutions within that narrative The wo rk necessa ry t o mount this exhibit ion and to publish its related research has recelved genero us supp ort fr om lo ngt ime fri ends and new champions of the Harvard Art Museums . We are grate ful to t he Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Family , the Charles 0. Wood III and Miriam M. Wood Found ation , Marguerite Steed Hoffman and Thomas W. Lentz, Catherlne Marcus Rose and Willi am Rose, Bridgitt and Bruce Evans, Mark N. Diker and Deborah A. Colson , and Elaine Levin. In addition , th e following endowed funds have provided crucial support : th e Agnes Gund Fund for Mod ern and Contemporary Art; the Alexander S., Robert L., and Bruce A. Beal Exhibit io n Fund; and th e Harvard Art Museums Mellon Publication Funds, includ lng the Henry P. Mcllhen ny Fund. Mod ern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made poss ibl e in part by generou s support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulltzer, Jr ., Fund for Mode rn and Contemporary Art. W hereas t he exhibitio n makes its impact through a hauntingly minimal installation- only nine w orks are includ ed in the show - this volume promises just the opposite: an exhaustlvely researc hed look at Salce do , her milieu , her past works , and new directions in her practlce. lndee d, t his pairin g of qui etly unsettling visual affect with years of deep thinking and research is a perfect way t o und ers t and and situate the art of Doris Salcedo . Mart ha Tedesc hi Elizabeth and John Mo ors Cabot Director Harvard Art Museums

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Acknowledgments

1 wrote this book beca use Doris Salcedo's sculptures and installations deeply provoke, m~ and disturb me on many levels . Her focus on political violence coupled with her abilitiesu a scu lpt or drew me to her work when I first saw it in the early 1990s, and the sociopolitical lssu she add resses resonated further once I had the opportunity to meet and begin talking with her In 2001, while she was a visiting artist at Harvard. The issues she confronts remain just as relevant today: in a world plagued by civil violence and terrorist attacks, how do we acknowledge and mourn tho se claim ed by violence? To Doris I owe my profound gratitude for sharing her thoughts, ideas, concerns, and eh• lenges over the years, giving me a vivid perspective on her deeply thoughtful practice. The hoW1 spent discussing th e co nceptual underpinnings of each work, the details of her process,the insig ht into choi ce and qualities of materials, and above all, hearing about her convers atkml with the victims and survivors whose experiences she absorbed as her own greatly informed mf thoughts. Learn ing from Doris ab out the time she has spent with mothers searching for thelr1 sons, witnessing th eir private pain and enduring loss, gave me an understanding of her sculptu that th e written word alone cannot convey. Whil e this book is driven by my deep respect and passion for Salcedo's work, it has reached comp let ion through the support of numerous people from both Harvard and far beyond. My adv isor, Tom Cummins, sparked my decision to pursue a doctorate and write the diasertat ion that formed the basis of this book . He understood my keen focus on Salcedo's proJe ct. and his unw avering belief in my ideas was invaluable, as was his knowledge of Latin Amerlcan cultur e, history , politics, and art. Also within Harvard 's Department of History of Art and Architecture, 1would like to thank Henri Zerner, whose teachings began for me in college ; 1 am grateful that they continued wlth his insightful co mments and warm encouragement on this particular project. Moreover, 1thank Professor Doris Sommer, whom I have known since the 1990s through Harvard's David Rockefeller Center for Latin Ameri can Studies, for her drive and commitment. 1 am deep ly grateful to my longtime mentor Margot Gill, former dean of Harvard's Graduat e Schoo l of Art sa nd Sciences and current administrative dean for international affairs in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She inspired and encouraged me to write about Salcedo, peppering me with incisive questions fed by her own intellectual curiosity and commitment to my project. My correspo ndence with Salcedo and my knowledge of her work has been helped tremendously by Carolyn Alexander, whose interest in the artist began in the early 1990s, beforeSalcedo achieved int ernational renown. Carolyn and her assistant, Ben McGowan, have provided invaluab le supp ort with photographs , collections data, and answers to numerous logistical questions involv ed in my research and the development of the exhibition. This exhibition has been thoroughly enriched by the generous loan of works by Salcedo from Charlotte and Herb Wagner, the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Neue Galerie, Kassel, the Institute of Contemporary Art , Boston, an anonymous collector, and from the artist herself. The addition of these sculptur es has allowed us to convey with breadth and depth Salcedo's dual concern with materiality and mourning -t he foundation of the exhibition. At the Harvard Art Museums, 1 owe great thanks to former director Tom Lentz and former chief cura t or Debi Kao, as weil as deputy director Maureen Donovan. Their unwavering beliefIn me and my scholarly interests fueled my efforts to write this book and curate the related exhibltion. lnd eed, Debi's direction and flexibility over these last few years has pushed and inspired mein more ways than I can say. From general discussions about the challenges of mounting the exhibiti on to specific guidance on aspects of the manuscript, she has been a steadfast supporter of my vision to bring Salcedo's sculptures to Harvard , andin particular the intellectual framework that our teaching mu seums can provide for exhibiting and studying the artist's work. l would also

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especially like to thank the museums ' new director, Martha Tedeschi, who has greatly supported th e exhibition ever since her arr ival in July 2016. Narayan Khandekar, senior conservation scientist and director of the museums' Strau s Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, and Angela Chang, senior objects conservator and assistant director of the Straus Center, have been important colleagues in my work on Salcedo, sharing their expansive knowledge as we address the ongoing care of her art. Narayan's curiosity, enthusiasm, and commitment to contemporary art, as weil as the conservation cha llenges it raises, has been hugely beneficial to my project, and I am grateful for the essay he contributed to this book. An exhibition like the current one poses certa in physical and logistical chal lenges, and I owe great thanks to colleagues in Collections Management, Facilities, and Security - Jennifer Allen, Katie Press, Karen Gausch and her team, Justin Lee, Peter Atkinson, Mik e Eigen, and Stephen St. Laurent- for their encouragement and support. Their determination and creativ ity have allowed me to reali ze this project . 1 would like to thank Lila Kanner and Thomas Woodward in lnstitutional Advancement. 1 am also gratefu l to Carlos Granada, Ingrid Raymond, and Joaquin Sanabria, all from Doris's stud io; their knowledge , skills, and attention to detail were invaluable to this exhibition. 1 am ind ebted to the astute guidance and ed itorial finesse of managing editor Micah Buis and his team of Sarah Kuschner and Cheryl Pappas for helping me shape my d issertation into this book . In particular, Micah 's patience and understanding , his careful attention to my ideas and words , allowed the fluid evolution of the manuscript over these last months . Likewise, 1 am gratefu l to Zak Jensen, Becky Hunt, and their fellow designers, whose id eas thoughtfully demonstrated an awareness and sensitiv ity to my aesthetic concerns as we decided on a design for the book. For keeping the many details, images, and deadlines of this book on a steady track I owe thanks to Dakota DeVos, who began her job in the middle of this project but imm ediate ly assumed responsibility for overseeing photography permissions and preparing materials for my signoff. Prior to Dakota's arr ival, Jessica Hong helped bring together the preliminary exhibition and budget tasks, for which I am grateful. 1would also like to acknowledge the support of my co lleagues in the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art , including Sarah Kianovsky, Lynette Roth , Michael Dumas , Jessica Ficken, and my curatorial intern, Jeronimo Duarte Riascos. Porter Mansfield, in the director's office, has also been a source of unflagging optimism and wise counse l forme over many years. Finally, 1 give specia l thanks to Emmy Pulitzer and Jerry Cohn for their encouragement of my work on Salcedo. From assisting in my research to providing access to works by Salcedo in her own art col lection, Emmy has shown an interest and generosity that has immensely benefited my scho larship. Simi larly, 1 am grateful to Jerry for teaching me, prodding me, and inspiring me count less times over the last three decades, leading most recently to this work on Salcedo. To my family, 1 owe my deep appreciat ion for their tireless support. lt saddens me that my mother isn't alive to see this book come to fruition; her tough questions and commitment to her ideals greatly influenced my perspective throughout this process. To my father , 1 am profoundly gratefu l for his curiosity , confidence, and unwavering support. His certa inty in me fueled the book 's comp let ion. lt is Juan , Diana, and Nico to whom I wish to express my greatest thanks. Diana and Nico grew up livin g with my deep commitment to Salcedo 's work, discussing and questioning her ideas and the nature of her sculpture. Their support and pride spurred my efforts, and I am enormously grateful. Finally, to Juan I owe a depth of thanks beyond measure. His enduring patience and belief in me, my ideas , and the importance of this book has made it and all things possible . Mary Schneider Enriquez Houghton Assoc iate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Harvard Art Museums

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Lenders to the Exhibition

Guggen heim Mus eum, Bilbao, Spain Inst itut e of Contemporary Art, Boston Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany Doris Salcedo, Bogota, Colombia Char lotte and Herbert S. Wagner III, Cambridge, Massachusetts Anonymous

XV

____ ,

From the Arti st

1 have pro du ce d all of my sculptures in Colombia, a country still at war and an eplcen ter catas t rop he t oday, one of many countries where tragedy seems tobe a single, continuous evet& Zealously and st ub bo rnly, 1 have remained working in the same place, which has been eo tent ly desc ribed in negativ e terms: as underdeveloped, third world, uncivilized, irrational, end bruta l. The negativ e place from which I make my work has defined the negative history I need add ress in th ese pieces. But thi s negative history can no langer be located in a speciflc cou my wor k not only co mes fr om Colombia , it derives from turmoil and civil war-and civll wm. Hannah Arendt wrot e in 1963 , " is raging all over the earth. " 1 Th us, my w ork co uld com e from any of the many places where extreme violenceg ram pant . lt co mes from wh ere we find the trace of the tragic, where, as Giorgio Agamben out, it is diffi cult t o di stinguish between war and peace , where the d ifference betweens and civili ans has been effa ced. For him , civil war marks a "threshold of indifference in whlch polit ica l and t he unpoliti cal, the outside and the inside coincide." 2 Clearly, this Situation1 lange r rest rict ed t o places defined as "third world. " The 21st ce ntury 's civil war is a war whose battlefront has disappeared. Nowwe find fro nt everywh ere, and th e attack can come from anyone. Death strikes at random, as in Hook Element ary School , or at a Charleston church, in a small town in Colombia, in Bru or at a Pakist ani park. Undeclared civil war acquires different forms in different piaces,but co mm on element in all of th em, as Agamben explains, is the fact that "life as such becomes st akes of po liti cs." 3 lt is fr om thi s negativ e perspective that I have produced all of my work, driven by the ob sive need t o render visible th e experiences of the most vulnerable and most anonymous victlm po lit ica l violence. This viewpoint has confined my work into a fragile threshold, a thresholdfl w it h imp ossibl e contr adi ctions that will remain unsettled in each and every one of my ple 1 have co me t o believe the se contradictions and paradoxes constitute my work's very essen ce. Every one of my pieces has begun with the testimony of a victim of political violence whotl ex erience is a requirement for the very existence of my work. For this reason, 1have adopted, Gill es Deleuze's belief t hat an artist must be forced into a-n exercise of depersonalization, in ordtJ! t o produ ce work s that are far removed from the autobiographical and strongly connected to a po liti cal im medi acy. Philosopher Alain Badiou goes even further when he argues that an artlst'I desire needs tobe arti culated from the point of view of the location of each individual, in relatlon t o a spec ifi c tr aumatic experi ence.4 The poet Paul Celan considers a similar idea. In his text The Meridian, he writes that an artlst is "he wh o has forgott en all about himself . .. andin this manner art moves with the oblivious seif into th e unca nny and strange ." But later in the same text, he argues that "only the artistswho speak fro m an angle of refl ection , which is their own existence, their own physical naturecan reach th e myste ry of an encounter ."5 My work is based on experience s I lack; therefore , it is made from an unfamiliar, unstable place~simul ta neous ly .str ange and proper . lt is made from an indirect perspective, a place of insuffi ciency from whi ch a fragmentary , incomplete history is precariously told and retold. The place fro m whi ch I have tried to produce my work is extraordinarily portrayed in this verseby poet Osip Mandelstam:

Wh at I am saying now, is not being said by me, lt's du g fr om th e earth , Like g rains of petrifi ed wheat .6

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For Badiou, a poem like this subtracts language from the manipulations of knowledge. He believes art that speaks from the perspective of the unknown is the only one capable of thinking our time. This kind of art is a constant reminder of the fact that rules , norms, and acquired knowledge are insufficient to render visible those aspects of reality that - from the perspective of the estab lishment-shou ld remain invisible and nonexistent. Lacan expressed the same idea blunt ly when he said, "Poets .. . don 't know what they 're saying, yet they sti ll manage to say things before anyone else." 7 Art, as Kierkegaard wrote, is "about discovering something that thought cannot think, something imposs ibl e." 8 By now, 1should be used to working from the unknown , since it is the situation in which I place myself every time I start working on a new piece. But I am not used to it , be ca use it is alw ays a paradoxical, disorienting, contradictory situ ation, appropriate ly described by Kafka as "universa lly impossible." 9 "Impossible" is the word that, forme, defines the creat ive act, an act in which - as Derrida instructs us - one should do on ly what is impossible . "That ought to be the impossible-rule, " he says.10 Art's main task is to open up the possibility of the impossible; it " [exceeds] the stab le borders of the presently possible," as theologian John Caputo teils us in his reading of Derrida .11 Art exceeds knowledge - spec ifi cally, the knowledge or present understanding of what it means to be human . Celan thinks that in every work of art, "even in the least ambitious, there is thi s ineluctable question, this exorbitant claim." For him, art is "the impossible road an artist must follow . . .. [A]rt is on route towards a you that is constantly fading away from our grasp . . . . [A]rt is an attempt to make possible this impossible encounter ." 12 Forme, working with art is synonymous with working with the impossible . Derrida asks us to begin "by the impossible," and not, as Caputo points out, "with the impossible, as with some initial object of inquiry that seems impossible," but rather pushed or shocked into action by the impossible. 13 The impossible appears in my work when I need to make the ground cry drops of water that will join together to slowly write the names of those victims whose lives this society refuses to grieve. Or when, against all odds, grass grows underneath a wooden table, or when a shroud is made with rose petals that do not wither. Or when it is necessary to build a wall down ward instead of the usual upward. Sometimes my task seems impossible , because each time 1 need to make a radically different piece to honor the singularity of each and every victim's experience. So different that I need to go from animal fiber to sta inle ss steel, from extreme ly heavy to im material. In my work I do not accumulate knowledge; every single time I begin working on a new piece, my point of departure is a tabula rasa. Emmanue l Levinas thinks that we shou ld not be lik e "Ulysses, whose adventure in the world was only to return to his native island - a complacency in the same." 1 • lnstead, he suggests a departure with no return , no triumph, no award. He invites us to act lik e Mo ses, who never entered the promised land . 1hope that by producing works from the unknown, and by taking a tabula rasa as a point of departure, 1will be ab le to work beyond myself . Doris Salcedo Bogota, May 2016

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1. Hannah Arendt, On Revoluti on (New York: Viking Press, 1963) . 2. Giorg io Agamben, Stasis: Civil War as a Politi cal Paradigm (Stanfo rd, Calif .: Stanford University Press, 2015). 3. lbid. 4. Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Und erstanding of Evil (New York: Verso, 2001) . 5. Paul Celan, The Meridi an: Final Version - Drafts - Mater ials, ed. Bernh ard Bösc henstein and Heino Sehmull, trans. PlerreJorlt (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011) . · 6. Osip Mandelstam, "W hoever Finds a Horseshoe," in Comp lete Poet ry of Osip Emilevi ch Mandelstam , trans . Burton RaffelendAlla Burago (Alba ny: State Universit y of New York Press, 1973 ). 7. Jacq ues Lacan, The Seminar of J acques Lacan, vol. 2, Ir ans. Sylvana Tomaselli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988),. 8. S0ren Kierkegaard, Philosophi cal Fragm ents (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962) . 9. Quoted in Anne Sauvagnargues, Deleuze and Art, tra ns. Samanth a Bankston (London: Bloomsbury. 2013). 205, n. 5. 10 . Geoffrey Bennin gton and J acques Derrida, J acques Derrida (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1993). 11. Jo hn D. Caputo, The Prayers and Tears of Ja cques Derrida: Relig ion with out Religion (Bloomington: Indiana Universlty Press, 11117). 12. Celan, The Meridi an. 13. Caput o, T/1ePrayers and Tears of Jacqu es Derrida . 14 . Emm anuel Levinas, Emm anuel Levinas: Basic Philosop hica l Writin gs, ed. Adria an T. Peperzak , Simon Crltchley, and Robtd Bernasco ni (Bloomin gton: Indiana University Press, 1996).

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1ntrod uction

1met a very beautiful woman two years ago. A mother who had been waiting for ten years for her son to appear. In ten years she has never come out of the house in fear t hat her son might call or come to knock at the door when she is not around. She 1s a person caught in her own jail. His dish is always on the table. There are hundreds of cases like hers. lt is then that one realizes how these persons have been marked by violence. - Doris Salcedo 1 Doris Salcedo addresses political violence through sculpture and installation art, creatinga mat erial presence that evokes, without pictorializing, the absent, unnamed victims of civil war. She live s in Bogot a, Colombia , where she was born and has chosen to remain; she has seen f irst hand the viol ence that has plagued her country, witnessing the devastation and listening to victim s of th e brutal confl ict between leftist guerrillas, the military, narcotics traffickers, and paramilit ary forc es. Thousand s of her fellow Colombians have "disappeared"-that is, they have been kidn apped and sometimes never found - or they have been killed or forced to abandon t heir hom es and resettle due to the strife. Testimonies from the affected have fueled Salcedo 's comm it ment to acknowledg e and mourn , through sculpture and installation, the unburied dead and t he wounded survivor s ignor ed by the state. Her project initially focused on the politics and th e silent victim s of violen ce in Colombia, but after gaining international attention in the 1990s, she has gone on to create works that confront political violence faced by societies throughout th e world and in diff erent eras. My int erest in Salcedo's work grew out of my experience living in Mexico City from the mld 1980s to 1990s. This was a period of uprising by harshly oppressed indigenous peoples in Chiapas, Mexico, and of dramati c pol iti cal rupture in the country . Chiapas and its indigenous communl ti es f igure d signi fica ntly in my fam ily's commitment to the country and our relationship with its

1

Fig.1 Unlitled, 1995. Wood, cement, stee l, c lot h, and leather, 236.2 x 104.1 x 4 8.2 c m (93 x 41 x 19 in.). Museum of M ode rn Art , New York, Th e No rm a n a nd Rosi t a Winston Foundation, lnc., Fund; and purchase , 4.1996.

history, as our exposure to the fractious circumstances surrounding the Zapatista Revolution in southern Mexico and to the threatening discord within the nation's government and military was direct and personal: my husband was part of a team sent into the jungle to negotiate a peaceful solution with the Zapatistas. What we came to understand about marginalization and the ways in which political violence threatens indigenous communities is something that permanently changed my life and that of my family. When I initially encountered Salcedo's work, 1had no knowledge of the specifics of her history and sources, and yet her artistic stateme nt resonated with me following that experience of living in Mexico . Cement-filled furniture pieces, single chairs, a bureau with chairs fused on top: these were the first works I saw by the artist, and they abso rbed my attention and disturbed

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my thoug hts (Fig. 1). Trained as a painter , Salcedo has chosen sculpture as her medium and tha worn objects of do mest ic lif e - everyday possessions and materials that are loaded with a~ tion s and are fa mili ar across cultur es and generations - as her means. She builds complex layert ce nt imet er by cent imet er, a verit able skin bearing the wounds and history of political vlole She me lds, rubs, and fo rces her mat erials into a surprisingly delicate surface that evokes a sl presence, mu fflin g so mu ch within . The surface , which reveals Salcedo's exactingproce abrad ing, sut uring, and int erweaving diverse materials, becomes crucial to understandi ng work (Fig. 2). And the highly detail ed, exhaustively repeated actions she undertakesin thisp simu lt aneously sugges t an act of violence and an act of release. FoJ Salcedo , scu lpt ure serves as ~ itness to violence and the physi c.al 1md emotional..,.,__,_ wro ught by co nfli ct. Althou g h her focus has been on politics and war in Colombia, from t e her work s h~ g hlig hted th e political conditions and violence inflicted on peoples of varl societ ies and t ime periods. However, the original and continued source for her address stemsf living in Colom bia. She delib erately breaks with sculpture's long history of translating me into mon ume nt s, and..b_ e r _yv o rk engages dialectically with p ostwar _s~ulpjural traditions

Fig. 2 Unland: Irr eve rsibl e Wiln ess (de t a il), 1995 - 9B. W oo d e n tab les, st ee l c rib, silk , and h air, 111.B x 24B.9 x BB.9 cm (44 x 9B x 35 in.). Sa n Fra nc isco M u se um o f M o d e rn A r t, Pu rc h ase th ro ugh th e J acq u es a nd Natasha Ge l man Fund a nd th e Accessions Com mi t t ee Fund , 9B.530.

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) by other international art ists, such as Christian Boltanski, Eugenio Dittborn, Mona Hatoum, ,d Rache! Whiteread, wh Ö h-ave also focused on the themes of memory, absence, violence , 2 1d oppression . \/Vithout incorporating a narrative structure or the specificity of figurative eleents - the vivid image of a wounded body, a house damaged by gunfire with blood splattering e walls, the face or name of a victim - Salcedo nevertheless conveys the presence of those irmed by violence, the enduring effects of violation, and the uncertainty and strangeness of e following trauma. The~ stimony_of survivors and witnesses, their pain and mourning, is the undation of all the works she creates. She invests materials with the weight of expressing 3 gedy and its aftermath, and this commitment to materiality defines both her practice and the 1ture of her address . ilcedo's interest in materials is an aesthetic statement embedded in her commitment to art aking in general and to the medium of scu lptur e in particular. The extended ~riod over which e conceives a sculpture or installation and carries out the necessary research into the context the site and the victims' experiences has a direct link to her focus on materials and process. 1 , not view Salcedo's work through the same lens as visual studies scho lar Mieke Bai, who con:lers her sculptures "theoretical objects": pieces of cu ltur al evidence meant to serve as politica l ,jects "enforcing a gaze" rat her than as works of art .3 This perspective, while rooted in theories at shed useful light on Salcedo's project, ultimately fails to frame her work within the history art making and the traditions of sculpture, which is integral to her practice. Over the years, Salcedo has absorbed and considered the concerns of other artists - Marcel 1champ,Joseph Beuys, and Colombian sculptor Beatriz Gonzalez chief among them - in an effort

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Fig. 3 . In sta ll a t ion f or th e 52 nd Carneg ,e Int ern at iona l, 1995, Carneg ie Muse um o f A rt, Pitt sbu rgh .

Fig. 4 La Casa Viuda IV (de t ail). 1994. Wood,

fa b ric , a nd bones, 259.9 x 47 x 33 c m (10 2 5/ ,o x 18 ½ x 13 in .). Mu se u m o f Mod e rn Art, New York , Co mmit t ee 011 Paint ing a nd Sc u lp tur e Fund s, Latin Ame ri can a nd Car ibb ea n Fund , a nd gift o f Pat ricia Phe lps de Cisne ro s, 85.2010.

t.,_

both t o situ at e and to distinguish her practice relative to these artisticforebears.Although deg ree of influ ence varies, she has interwoven elements from each of these three key20th-century art ist s. Gonzalez's work and rigorous theoretical teachings fostered Salcedo's receptivenes s to and keen int erest in Beu s's work and practice . His idea of social sculpture and use of Ol\ mat erials and everyday obje cts provided Salcedo an exampie of how to merge p litical conc erns wi t h at erLa.li!: y; his expanded notion of art has informed how Salcedo creates pieces that raw view ers into ac knowledging th e victims of political violence. And Beu s's deliberate choice of mate rials th at are charged with sociopolitical significa nce relates directly to Salce os in erest iQ_ t he s ec ifi cit of mat erials and surface. ___ _ of Whil e Salcedo's incorporation of everyday objects invites comparison toiDuchamp's th t he readym ade, her app roach diff ers from the Duchampian idea of turning anonymous, everyday, man ufac t ured object s into art , incongruously installed on pedestals in gallery spaces. ~o instea d select s co mmon dom esti c objects that are particular , warn, and personal; they bearthe t ~aces ol th ose harm ed by ROlitical violence . She fills , scrapes , and melds them, inserting frag~ nts of butto ns or bones ~- order ~ ate specific, hand-wrought works - the antithesis of the banal, mass- produ ce d readymade that Duchamp preferred. In fact , as I will argu e, Salcedo employs a set of six visual s trategies tha.t.iofnrm gur understa nding of her sculptur es and in~ tallations. The first relates to the concept of space: namely, t he privat e and prot ected space of a kitchen or bedroom . She dramatically alters the safe haven of t he harne, ta king dom estic furnishings and filling them with cement , gouging them, splicing t hem wit h zippe rs or st eel bars. Private space is violated, and placing a bed or kitchen table in a 9allery th en beco mes a furth er intrusi sin (Fig. 3). In addition , Salcedo hig hlights ttie pafficülm' ity of space . As she has comm ented , space is rarely neutral and, indeed, is a freque':!!~ause of war. Wit hin violent co nfli ct , spaces become uninhabitable, forcing victims to flee. Second, cri t ica l to Salcedo 's sculptures is the idea of the uncanny-the familiar made st range - as w eil as th e con cept of anthropomorphism. Many of her sculptures from the late 1980s and '90s include arti cles of worn clothing, shoes, spoons, or hair, imparting traces o t ose l.ost to viol ence (Fig. 4). And the awkward reconfiguration of table legs, bed frames, wardrobes, d rawer s, doors, and chairs results in sculptures that are at once known and unknown.

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5

Fig. 5 Untitled, 2003. A pp rox.1,550 wooden chair s, approx . 10.1 x 6.1 x 6.1 m (33 x 20 x 20 ft.). Ephemeral public project for lhe 8 th Int ernational Istanbul Bien nial, 2003.

Salcedo 's third visual strategy involv~ the materiality of surface, briefly discussed above. Surface, and the exhaustive process of building complex layers of materials in order to create a skin bearing the wounds and history of political violence, is a priority for the artist and a key 1aspect in reading her works. Time , the fourth visual strateg y, operates as a material presence in Salcedo's works.lt is measurec_J, for example , by the wear evident in the torn clothing and by the poured concrete,once soft but now densely suffocat ing the clothes. Silk threads and hairs sewn into wooden tables mark th e hour s of careful work needed to create the fragile pieces, while also subtly referencing time 's passing. Time connects as weil with the concept of duration, o_L!b_esignifican~lt, ment that Salcedo's works requ ire of the viewer - an expectation that we look closely to see the tr aces, the threads, the ways in which she created each piece. The fifth strategy concerns the correspQ_ndence of body to scale. Salcedo probes this relation ship in three ways: in the perspective and proportions of the viewer's body relativeto the dim ensions of th e sculpture Ürinstallation (her stacked bureaus and beds reca I familiar, accessibly scaled domestic furni shings); Ln her emphasis on the body as the trace of the victim (consider, for example, Salcedo's Istanbul Biennial installation, with worn chairs bearing the traces of thoset who touched them; Fig. 5); and in sculptures that suggest the form and notion of a Strange body\ or being through their shape, scale, and appendages. 4 Which brings us to the sixth visual strategy: disjunction and disorientation. Salcedo juxta oses 'il harshly different materials to construct pieces made up of familiar objects th .atare sybtlybut 0 di sturbingly alt e red (Fig. 6). This strategy recalls the realities of living in civil war, where repeated exposu re to horrific acts shatters one's sense of what is normal. How does one carry on a daily routi ne of laundry , meals, and homework amid random and brutal violence and destruction? In rece nt years, Salcedo has pushed her commitment to materiality and its expressive possibi liti es to new extremes. An interest in temporality has led to her increasing use of impermanent mater ials that impart a fragile, seemingly evolving presence on the verge of disappearing (Fig. 7). Her scu lptur es make time stand still, and her latest works in particular arrest the natural ag ing pro cess of organic materials - grass, soil, rose petals - to haunting effect. She chooses de licat e but decidedly palpable materials to create specter-like wo,rks that hover between form and shadow- elus ive im ages, like the memories that fuel mourning (Fig. 8). Salcedo has always assembled works that project quiet but vividly hand -wrought expressions; her newest pieces pare down the physical presence of materials to draw attention to their ephemerality, blurring the line between sculpture and performance, between being and becoming. Thi s bald chal lenge to the limits and possibilities of materials puts Salcedo squarely at the forefront of her field . Since she began her practice in the 1980s, du ring some of the bloodiest years of Colombia 's civil war, she has chosen sculpture as her medium and a language based solely on ~ter ials, 09!..Q arrative or figuration, to express her artistic statement. e has deliberately broken with the sculpt ural traditio n of memorializing through monuments, and has instead selected familia 7"turnishings ana o Jects rom t e omestic späce:""" a oring over them, filling and sutur ing them into a suspended state between past and present. For Salcedo, the material presence must speak to the victims ' experience, and as her work has developed she haschosen increasingly tempora l materials that she wills beyond · their usual properties. Materiality,then, is never a secondary concern in Salcedo's efforts to address and mourn the effects of polltlcal v~ ence; it is integral to that work .

Fig. 6 (fo ll ow ing page s) Unti tled, 2008. Wood en table, wooden arm oires, co n c re t e, and st ee l, 76 x 268.5 x 172.5 cm (30 x 105 ¾ x 68 in .). Priva te co ll ec t io n, Lon d on.

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1

1 '

t 1 ' 1

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1

j

1

Fig. 7 Plegaria Muda (detai l), 2008-10. Wood, mineral compo und, metal, and grass, 96 of 166 unit s, each 164 x 214 x 61 cm (64 % x 84 ½ x 24 in .). From the co llec ti o ns o f lnhotim Co ll ect ion , Brazil; MAXXI, Rome ; and Sa n Francisco Museum of Mod ern Art. Installation view at Mu seo Univer sitario de Arie Co nt emp oraneo, Mexico City, 2011.

Fig. 8 Disremembered II, 2014. Silk thread a nd ni cke l - plated stee l, 89 x 55 x 16 cm (35 x 21 ½ x 6 ¼ in .). Co ll ection of Cha rl o tt e and Herb ert S. Wagner 111 , Ca mbridg e , M assachusetts.

1. Doris Salcedo, quoted in Santi ago Villaveces-lzqui erdo, "Art and Med ia-ti on: Reflections an Violence and Representatlon, • In Cu/turaf Producers in Perifous States: Editing Event s, Documenti ng Change , ed. George E. Marcus (Chicago: Universlty of Chicago P....., 1997), 241. 2. On Mona Hatoum and Rache! Whiteread, see Neal Benezra and Olga M. Visa, eds., Distemper: Dissonant Themes in theArtol the 1990s (Washington, D.C.:Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithso nian Institution ; New York: D.A.P./Distrlbuted Art PubUlhat, 1996), 6- 21, 48-55, 86-95 , 104 - 14; an Eugenio Dittborn, see Madeleine Grynsztejn ,A bout Place: Recent Artofth e Amerlcas (Chlcagal Art Inst itute of Chicago, 1995), 20-22; and on Christian Boltanski , see Didier Semin, Christian Boltansk i (London : Phaldon Press, 1811). 3. Mieke Bai, 01 What One Cannot Speak: Doris Salcedo's Pofitica l Art (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2010), 2- 5; andMiau Bai, "Earth Aches: The Aesth etics of th e Cut," in Doris Salcedo: Shib bo leth (London : Tate, 2 00 7), 44 , 46 , 49, 72 - 73 . 4. Mieke Bai likewise suggests a series of aesthet ic strategies t hat Salcedo comm only employs, including several alreadymentl Ollld (an int erest in installatio n art and site- specif icit y, translat ion, ant hropomo rphi sm , duration , monumentality) and two eddltlonll ones: labo r and language. She co nnects labor to the many hands t hat are part of th e exhaustive process necessary In bulld lng fflOlt of Salcedo's pieces. (Bai even draws a co mparison to the anonymo us worke rs wh ose tirel ess efforts have bullt so much In ~ socie ti es over time .) Language for Bai refers to the artist 's choice of words as delib erate and linked directly with th e polltl cal funo,, tion of her art. See Bai, 01 What One Cannot Speak, 2-5; and Bai, "Earth Ac hes," 4 4 , 46, 49, 60- 62 , 72 - 73. Carlos Basualdo hal allll focused on the element of language. He discusses Salcedo's sculptures as a montag e of diverse materials that are layered, dlsl)lll'IIII. and disjoin ted, and he co mpares thi s to the disintegration of language in th e poet ry of Paul Celan, who att empted to expr the expe rience of absence fo llowing the Holocaust. See Carlos Basualdo, "Carlos Basualdo in Conversation with Doris Salcedo: In Dorfs Sa/cedo , ed. Nancy Princenth al, Carlos Basualdo, and Andreas Huyssen (London: Phaidon Press, 2000) , 21 - 22; and Carlos Buualclo, "A Model of Pain," in Doris Sa/cedo: NEITHER (London: White Cube, 2004), 31-33.

13

In Context: Violence and Contemporary Art in Colombia

Since the mid -2 0th century, particularly in the period known as La Violencia (1948-65), violence has been such a prominent feature of Colombian political and civic life that as a result,cultural prod uction has had to take acts of violence into account at every phase. Within this context, Salcedo and other arti sts have created works that speak to the loss, the memories, and the realit ies of lif e und er these co nditions, and they have done so through diverse yet deliberately chosen mean s. This chapter briefly describes the complex history of Colombia's culture of violence before look ing more closely at select artistic responses to that violence. In particular, 1explore the work of two conte mp ora ries of Salcedo, Oscar Murioz and Juan Manuel Echavarrfa, to provide insight into so me of th e dominant aesthetic choices circulating within the artistic and sociopolitical env ironm ent that Salcedo inhabits . Civi l vio lence in Colombia is different from violence in most nations around the world. There, violence is viewed as an element of national id~ tity, it is examined by intellectuals as a discrete fi eld of st udy, and it has pervaded and informed much of the nation's history over the latter half of t he 20t h century . The causes are varied, complex, and intractable; disappearances, murder, forced evacuat ions, and displacements occur with such frequency that one's survival depends on adap ting to a worldview in which war and violence are deemed "normal" parts of life. A disappeara nce, in Colombia as weil as in other countries of the region, refers to kidnapping, hidin g, and impri soning a person against her will, frequently resulting in the victim's death. The tactic is an act of stat e t error, employed not only by guerrillas but by paramilitary forces and by prin cipal grou ps vying for power. Victims who are disappeared can range from an executive held fo r ransom by insurge nts to a suspected guerrilla sympathizer or their relatives taken by privat e militia . ThE:_9 isappeared are sometimes never found, and the disappeara _nce , in effect, erases their existence and the possibility of marking their death with the ritual of burial. The t hreat of being subj ect to a di sappeärance generates extreme fear and silence from susceptible

15

individu als, and from families concerned that their kidnapped loved ones will end up in ma ss 1

graves if they speak out against the perpetrators. Violence in Colombia takes various forms and extends across many fronts , leaving no corner of the nation' s social, political, economic, rural , or urban landscape untou ched. lt is both state -s anctioned and illicitly imposed , and its prevalence as a tool in the overall functioning of th e nation demonstrates, in part, the ways in which the country has been defined by it s culture of violence. In the mid - 1980s , when Salcedo ~ gan constructing her first pieces , the National Minist er of Government appointed a Special Comm ission for the Study of Violen ce, charg ed with investigating the nature, context, and causes of the violence. Salcedo's works at that time ; ngaged the issues central to the commission's mandate. Members of the commission included a retired major general from the Colombian army and nine leading academics . Gonzalo Sanchez G6mez, the preeminent scholar on the history of violence in Colombia , served as coordinator of the commission's final report, Colombia: Violencia y Democracia , published in 1987. 2 Moreover , in that same year university scholars in Colombia created an academic field called violentolog{a (violentology) to tocus on the study of civil war and violence. These violent6/ogos - historians, politic al scientists , sociologists, and other intellectuals - posited objective causes of the nation 's violent culture, making recommendations to government leaders about how to address the problems .3 The commission rigorously analyzed the scope, depth, and history of violence in Colombi a, ultimately determining that the causes were due to a range of factors. Further, the study portrayed the nation as plagued by social and economic structures that , in effect, prompt and do little to dispel persistent violence . Although the country has an international reputation for violence related to political insurgency and narcotics trafficking, the commission pinpointed several other key causes and protagonists: political violence by specific guerrilla groups against the state and the paramilitary or privately funded armies fighting for conservative causes; organized crime against reporters , politicians , and union leaders; organized crime against private individuals in the form of extortion and threats for financial gain; state-imposed violence as a means of maintaining "pu_!?lic order" outside the law, including the protection of territory and the intimidation of suspected insurgents through disappearances , torture ?and "other excesses"; state violence through military force rather than civil dialogue against social protest movements; state violence against ethnic minoritie s based on racial bias, including land seizures and physical brutality; violence by individual criminals, including homicide, larceny, and robbery; family/domestic violence; and organized gangs who attack homose xuals, prostitutes, drug dealers, ex-convicts , and others they deem detrimental to society . The commission also cited a new source of violence , working in conjunction with several of the groups listed here: professional contract killers or assassins for hire , known as sicarios (among other names) , who serve individuals and organizations both legal and illicit .4 Tracing the history of smuggling, from emeralds to coca , provides further context for the structural role that violence plays in Colombia and informs a broader perspective on the particu lar nature of the violent culture. Eighty percent of the nation's emeralds are mined northeast of Bogota in the western part of the Boyaca department , near the Minero River basin .5 Throughout th e 20th century , the region suffered heavy partisan conflict wrought by area political chiefs in the 1940s, and then by armed bands in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the structure surrounding and reinforcing the emerald business also established and fortified the coca industry. Funds from the sale and sm uggling of gems were in turn invested in the growing, processing, and selling of coca . Private armies were organized to protect those who were behind the exploitation and sale of illicit gem s (and later narcotics) and to maintain political control in the area. Violence was used to settle accounts between competitors; targeted explosions were set in rural and urban settings, weapons were stockpiled , and bodyguards or others were hired to commit the "dirty work" of killing or at least terrorizing political and union activists , cattle thieves , and those connected to guerrilla groups , business rivals, informants , and spies .6 This prevalence of violence in Colombia began as early as the Thousand Days' War (1899 1902) , but took hold again in the period of La Violencia, wbich exploded in 1948 after the assassin~on of Liberal P_arty presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. 7 Although the situation has improved, Colombia is still in the midst of what is considered the world's langest civil war

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(spanning mor e than 50 years and resulting in over 250,000 deaths and the displacement of more th an fiv e miHion people), a~d,the viol~nce continues to ripple throughout the country to thls day. For t he flr st tim e since Ga,tan s assassinat,on, peace talks occurred in the spring of 2016 between t h_~dominant guerri _lla grnups - FARC (Fuerzas Ar_ madas Revolucionarias de Colombia) ~ ELN (EJerc,to de L1berac1onNac,onal)-and the Colomb,an government, resultin.9 in a ceasefire. FinaÜy, aft er postp onements and continued negotiations pertaining to the terms of disarming the rebei guerrill as, a historic peace agreement was signed in Havana on June 23, 2016, and a definitive acco rd reached in August. A final referendum must still occur, and various sectors are skeptical about th e prospect of peace, especially in light of escalating violence by paramilitaries and the pro po sed legitimi zation of the Marxist guerrilla members. 8 La Violencia was fueled by a complex series of circumstances, outlined in the special commlssion's 1987 report. Following Gaitan's murder on a Bogota street on April 9, 1948, thousands of support ers (Gaitanistas) marched through Bogota and other cities, burning public buildings an churc hes, ransacking warehouses and retail stores, and liberating prisons. ~unrest resylted in th e brutal deaths of four thousand __p eople, most of whom were civilians, by the government. Gaitan, a gifted orator who shared his popular liberal platform with energ,zed crowds ot drsaffeeted individu als, repeatedly exhorted his supporters to react publicly if ill befell him, urging "lf theykill m e, avenge me!" 9 Their widespread response to his murder, called Bogotazo, spread nationwide, leading to a conservative backlash and to the extended period known as La Violencia. Graphie im agery portraying the angry protestors wielding machetes as weil as wounded, bleeding bodles circulated wid ely, deliberately placed in media outlets to arouse fear and horror. 10 1 The conflict behind La Violencia had its origins in 1946, when the Conservative Party assumed i:1ow er after ea~ of Liberal Party rul!::JThe latter's socia, economic, and political modernrzaton effort s had fomented political polarization , and the conservatives' victory sparked regional violence, evolving into what was deemed civil war between the two political groups. This tension fed to Gaitan 's assassination in 1948, followed by the repressive rule of conservative president Laureano Gomez beginning in 1950. The early part of that decade saw the emergence of liberal and communist peasant guerrilla groups; private, conservative counterinsurgency groups called pajaros; and 8 politi cized poli ce force known as chulavitas. Countless acts of brutality came to define the period, including the massacre and/ or torching of entire indigenous communities as weil as Protestant village s, and the incineration of the country 's two main newspapers, EI Tiempo and EI Espectador. In 1953 , amid this brutal turmoil , Gustavo Rojas Pinilla assumed power, leading Colombia's only military government of the 20th century, until he was ousted by anational strikein 1957. An agreement between the liberal and conservative parties created the Frente National Government, offi cially "ending " the conflict. This pact established an alliance that called for the two partiesto alternate presidential power and divide political posts, but left no space for political alternatives outside the established party organizations. 11 This inflexibility, among other factors, accountsfor th e sharp rise in the 1960s of guerrilla groups, many of which evolved from the armed peasant band s formed in the early '50s .12Hence, the government's very measures to preclude the kind of confli ct th at led to violence in the 1940s and '50s spurred the creation of groups opposed to the ruling partie s, including FARC, ELN, and EPC (Ejercito Popular Nacional). Between 1948 and 1965, La Violencia brought about an estimated three hundred thousand fataliti es. The deaths frequentl _y resulted from depraved_acts o~_terror,including ~orture, mutilation , and public sacrifice, carned out not only by guernllas, paJaros, and chulav,tas but also by ' th e Colombi an state .13Excessively gruesome rituals of violence-such as castration, severing \ of ton gues, and disembowelment - were practiced during these years to eliminate victimsand to creat e searing images in the minds of the surviving population. 1•

As histori an Gonzalo Sanchez Gomez has noted, the guerrilla groups that took root in the early 19505 were not seeking political overthrow; instead, they provided the social frameworkin which youth were cultivat ed and became committed to a life of crime and violence. This typeof experience w ould inform insurgents such as Manuel Marulanda, the leader of FARC until his death in

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2008. Tobe a guerrilla was a vocation, an alternative to becoming a teacher , doctor, or prie st, and this "routinization of guerrilla activity," as Sanchez G6mez describes it , weighs heavily on Colombia still today. 15 The 1960s saw a pronounced rise in such guerrilla groups for a number of reasons. That was the decad e in which Colombia experienced major social changes: accelerated urbanization, the rise of an urban middle class, changing roles for women and the resulting effects for the family structure , and expanded access to secondary and higher education. Meanwhile, rural areas suffered from entrenched poverty that related in part to historical issues of land tenure. 16 Unlike many Latin American countries, Colombia did not undertake agrarian reform and the redistribution of land in the countryside. Peasants were pushed to outlying regions, where they subsist ed until their land no longer produced crops and they moved on to homestead new property. When they did move, their farms were taken over by creditors or local large landowners . These agrarian peasants, called colonos (colonizers) , have played only a minor role in Colombia's economy. They live in regions of such remove from the social and political structure of the state that their voices are of little consequence; yet each town is defined as either liberal or conservative, and members of the opposing party are not welcome. In these distant, relatively inaccessible regions of Colombia - traditionally settled by marginal populations made up of poor whites, blacks , and mestizos - the state has had limited influence, which is why guerrillas , paramilitary groups, and , more recently, the narcotics trade have easily taken root and flourished there .17 Radical armed guerrilla groups emerged fro~ t~e power vacuum, responding to problems faced by the rural peasants, the militant activism of university students, and pressures from the growing urban middle class. The success of the 1959 Cuban Revolution encouraged the orga nization of armed insurgent groups, including FARC and ELN. Following Castro's revolutionary ideals , the ELN was formed in 1964 by middle-class students , intellectuals, union sympathi zers, and previous liberal guerrillas. Two years later, peasant defense groups in the peripheral areas, inspired by the communist party and suffering attacks by the army, established the FARC guer rillas, one of the principal players in Colombian violence more than 20 years after the group 's formation. 18 In 1967, the EPL was created in support of Maoist theories and acted as the military wing of the Communist Leninist Party. The M-19 group (the Movement of 19 of April, the day on which Gaitan was assassinated) emerged in 1973, composed of dissidents from FARC. Primarily an urban group , they united in protest of the electoral fraud that is believed to have cost former general Pinilla the 1970 presidential election. 19 Not all of these groups were united from within, however. According to historian Daniel Pecaut, FARC at one time included more than 60 sub-groups , each with specific priorities and loyalties. 20 Because the motives, goals, and actions taken may differ from one to another , the characterization and containment of these groups is complicated at best. What is certain, how ever, is that the groups and their splinter organizations have been a key part of Colombia's violent history since the mid-20th century. Paramilitary f Qif eS officially _emerged in the 1960s, and like the guerrilla groups, they continue to exert significant influence in the violence that pervades the country. These private, (u nofficial counterinsurgency forces were formed to work alongside the military in the early 1960s, \i o harass and eliminate leftist threats to the nation . The U.S. government, in an effort to preclude further Marxist revolts in the region in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, proposed the creation of a civilian armed force linked to the Colombian army. The force was tasked with carrying out operational functions such as counterpropaganda on behalf of the military, engaging in combat against recogni zed communist insurgents when necessary .21 The paramilitary forces were legalized by the Colombian Congress in 1968 , and \he defense ministry issued arms to these civilian defense groups . From the outset they were given authority, including permission to use force, but within parameters that allowed them to operate independently of the military. 22 Since that time their role has evolved, and with the growth of the narcotics industry in the early 1980s, their prominence and power expanded dramatically at the hands of drug traffickers, as weil as private landowners, businessmen, and the state. As leaders in the narcotics trade began to invest profits in vast cattle ranches and rural properties, they we re increasingly

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subj ect t o ext orti on and att acks by guerrilla forces. Consequently, they formed self-defense mi lit ias, or autodefensas, referred to as "narco-paramilitaries" in the press. These civilian armies initi ally att acked th e guerrillas , but they broadened their reach to protect coca-growing regions and t hei r export rout es. They accumulated such wealth and power that by 2004, a Colombian gove rnm ent report st at ed that they controlled much ot the country. 23 These autodefensas rose to promin ence as early as 1981, when drug leader Pablo Escobar and nearly two hundred other narco- t raffi ckers creat ed MAS (Death to Kidnappers), a private militia designed to kill guerrll• las fo llowing th e kidnapping of the daughter of the family running the Medellfn cartel. Another paramilit ary group , also called MAS, was created at the same time by army leaders, ranchers, and businessmen in th e Boyaca department. This group was composed of trained civilians and fo rm ed w ith th e purpo se of killing suspected FARC sympathizers. By 1987, th e government reported that an estimated 140 right-wing militia groups existed across th e country, all ostensibly fo cused on destroying the guerrillas. Their efforts were not based on direct co mb at with the guerrillas , but rather on murdering presumed supporters, whetherleft• ist s or reform ers in general. This involved invading homes and villages, and forcefully displacing wh ole co mmunitie s.24 As the Special Commission for the Study of Violence stated in its 1987 repo rt , th ese death squads, fostered by "an imprudent law" of 1968, were now organized by private groups or individu al military or police officers, and they administered justice by committing "acts of ext ermin ation against political movements and parties, opposition leaders, union members and sect ors presumed sympathetic to the guerrillas." The report goes on: Aft er th e killing of more than three hundred activists from the political party ... it is clear th at the death squads have shifted considerably from their initial objectives and \ have become instruments of revenge, reprisal, and intimidation .... Although these gro ups supposedly are organized to defend the economic, political and cultural order, \ th eir acti ons tran slate into the destruction of that very order. 25 Stori es abound ot the legendary, and ongoing, brutality of the paramilitary group AUC (Aut odefe nsas Unida s de Colombia): for instance, there is an image, captured on a cell phone, of a paramilit ary instru ctor demonstrating how to dismember a man, and the militia is known for disapp earing victims by quartering bodies and disposing of the parts by dispersing them in rivers, in shallow graves, or by burning , leaving no trace to implicate the perpetrators. 28 Jhe amb· ous relati onship betw een the AUC and officials in the Colombian government over the :.:: la::: s:.:. t .3~lends an addition al perspect ive on this paramilitary's characteristic extermination practice. Force d displa cement , a frequent action taken by both the paramilitaries and the guerrillas, bears heavily on the conditions under which Colombians are made to live. Guerrillas, known to finan ce th eir operations through kidnappings, have directly and indirectly forced evacuations of fa mili es and whol e villages: directly through threats and bombings, and indirectly as villagersflee In 27 fear of retali ation by th e paramilitaries, who presume that locals harbor sympathy for the guerrillas. Simil arly, th e priv at e militia s displace entire towns in their search for and elimination of guerrilla supp ort ers.28 Arm ed co!!_flict in Colombia has displaced an estimated 3. 7 million Colombians, which, after Sudan, is th e second largest population of internally displaced people in the world. Countless men, warnen, and children have been torced to flee their homes, leaving behind all that they know and hold dear. They are left to start over, often living hand -to-mouth in the growing number of shacks t hat surround Colombia 's major cities. Andin their exodus , someone they know-a neighbor, relativ e, or oth er loved one - will have disappeared at the hands of militant forces. Salcedo, who addr esses th ese conditions of war in her art, is also in dialogue with fellow artists and t heir work. By th e time Salcedo 's practice was weit advanced in the 1990s, art criticism in Co lo mbi a had begun to fo cus on the growing preoccupation with violence in contemporary Colombi an art; the continuous presence of violent images in the media; and the public's increasing desensiti zation to th ese graphic images . In 2003, critic Jose Roca pointed out that:

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in this regime violent visual images play a dual and contradictory role "simultaneously presenting violence and making it disappear." ... The repetition of these images turn s the violence into something mythical, and therefore inevitable , resulting in our passive resignation. 29 He goes on to say that although violence has figured in Colombian art since the mid-20th century, the impact of the relentless stream of graphically violent imagery on television and in print , identified in cultural spheres as pornomiseria, poses a special challenge for artists : how to present an image of death so that its personal and public significance engages the viewer .3o Critic Santiago Olmo explains, "Over the last few decades, in the social and political context of Colombia, the struggle between appearance, representation and perception of reality .. . has determined the social body's adaptation and coexistence to generalized violence." 31 Colombian society protects itself within these conditions by "keeping the ghosts at a distance"; but within art and literature one can find means of addressing the personal tragedies and giving voice to the silenced victims. 32 The response by artists and writers in the face of violence was explored in the seminal exhibition Arte y Violencia en Colombia desde 1948 (Art and Violence in Colombia since 1948), mounted in 1999 at Bogota's Museum of Modern Art. Organized by the museum 's director , Gloria Zea, and curated by Alvaro Medina, the exhibition was a way to address La Violencia - what Zea called the most horrific conflict in recent Colombian history. 33 The exhibition was the first systematic presentation of the ways artists address the violence: through painting, sculpture, installations , video, prints, photography, film, fiction, and poetry. In the catalogue, Zea voices hope that the research and exhibition of this art might "help change behaviors and habits that impede civil discourse." 34 The exhibition featured works by 50 Colombian artists, including Salcedo as weil as Oscar Mufioz and Juan Manuel Echavarrfa. Spread over four floors of the museum , the exhibition devoted each level to one particula ·r manifestation of violence in Colombia: torture, kidnappings, disappearances, and displacements. Works included semi-abstract paintings of the 1960s by prize -winning artist Alejandro Obreg6n; graphic and deeply disturbing videos and installations by Clemencia Echeverri and Ricardo Amaya; figurative canvases of Beatriz Gonzalez, Debora Arango, and Fernando Botero; conceptual work by Antonio Caro and Maria Fernanda Cardoso; sculpture by Enrique Grau; prints by Diego Arango and Bernardo Salcedo; and installations by Rosemberg Sandoval , Rodrigo Facundo, and numerous others . lnterspersed with the art were popular films and stills, poetry, and works of fiction, such as Fernando Vallejo's La Virgen de los Sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins) . Presented in the final year of a decade of extreme violence, the exhibition was seen by more than sixty thousand people in its opening three months, arousing strong reactions, including death threats made against Medina. 35 The exhibition clearly spoke to the pervasive presence of a culture of violence in Colombia as weil as the need by artists and writers to confront and diffuse this brutal constant , which distorts everyday life. To demonstrate how artists are responding to the violence, and to illuminate the specificity of Salcedo's project relative to other Colombian artists, the remainder of this chapter will look closely at two contemporaries, Oscar Mufioz and Juan Manuel Echavarrfa. Like Salcedo , both artists produce works that either directly or indirectly speak to the horrors and aftermath of violence; but they do so from dissimilar approaches. Oscar Mufioz centers his practice on portraits and the rendering of individuals who are recognizable yet still anonymous, expressing the toll of violence both human and personal in readily legible ways . Mufioz is from Cali, a somewhat geographically isolated city that is a center of the narcot ics trade . Consequently, he has had firsthand experience with the trade's influence on economic and social life as weil as with the political violence that has resulted. 36 Still, he declares that he does not put forth a political statement. Since the mid-1980s, Mufioz has created likenesses that represent and stand for the victims , but has rendered them through im permanent means, such as brushstrokes of water on stone. He captures and displays on film the appearance and

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di sappearance of these ima ges, suggesting the ongoing Colombian reality of the presencethen absence of victims. The idea of the portrait interests Muf\oz , he states, "because it extractsindlvidua ls from a form less univer se. lt is said that those killed by violence in Colombia are faceless and w ithout ident ity. Paradoxically, 1 think that never before has the portrait had more evocatlve and cult power." 37 Muf\oz explores photography's conceptual possibilities, testing the limits of the medium and incorporating drawing and painting. He focuses on the interplay between illusion and realityby evok ing and erasing the image in a process the viewer both observes and, in a sense, measures; fi xing the portrait as a last ing image is an endless challenge for the viewer. The temporallty, illusiveness, and materia lity palpable in his works are signatures of his practice. Water, air, ashes, light , and stone figure in Muf\o z's pieces, as do photographs of the deceased collected from new spaper ob itu aries, and renderings of himself. Using these materials to conjure up portraits th at are at once impermanent and evocative, the artist points to the complicated history and circum stance s particular to Colombia, in addition to the complex nature of memory under these cond ition s. He exp lain s: [l)n Colombia there is the war, a peculiar phenomenon in relation to memory.The war began at the end of the 1940s .. . 1 don 't know if it can be called a process,but it'sa situation that has existed for fifty years, [which) has not been resolved .... Eventhe faces of the dead can never be determined. There is something very contaminatedand confusing in all of that which is memory ... what we have here, wherepeoplehaveno identity or partic ularities, where nobody remembers anyone eise, where the deceased are not remembered because they do not have a face or a name. 38 Muf\oz' s works essenti ally capture the destabilization inherent in a country plagued by war. In his early, sem inal piece Aliento (Breath) (Fig. 1), 12 metal disks hang at face level, each revealing an im age of an unknown person (taken from the artist's collection of obituary photos) when the viewer breathes upon it. The deceased's face appears with the viewer's exhaled breath and Fig. 1 Osca r Mui ioz. A /ie nl o (de t a il). 1995. Grease pho tose rigra p h o n st ee l di sks, diarne t er: 20.2 c rn (8 in .) eac h .

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disappears when one inhales, at which time the mirrored surface presents a reflection of the viewer - a process that repeats cont inu ally for each disk. About this work, Colombian sc holar Lupe Alvare z writes : (O]ne cannot overlook the allu sion to political context, since the disappearance of people in the incommensurab le and habitual armed conflict afflicting the country , is probab ly one of the ghosts that haunts the collective conscience. In effect, A/iento uses portraits of people who were assassinated or met with violent deaths, thus allowing it tobe interpreted as a protest against apathy. 39 In Biografras (Fig. 2), Mufioz creates five portraits, again based on obituary photos, rendered through charcoa l dust projected on water contained in a sink. As he did with his series Narciso s (1994 - 95), Mufio z films the process of an image evolving. Here each portrait appears from the dust loosely, with the likeness of the individual projected on the surface of the water. As the water begins to flow down the drain, the face is distorted to grotesque, then indecipherable blots , whi ch ultimately disappear into the drain, accompanied by the gurgling sound of water escaping . In a continuous, seven-minute loop, the drain soon spouts water, the sink fills, and the portrait of the recently disappeared reemerges to the sound of water filling the basin, only to contort, disfigure , and di sappear again . Each of the five portraits in the Biograffas series is installed on the floor in a !arge, 138 x 138 cm square of light for viewers to "fall into," as if they, too, might disappear down the drain , helpless to the circumstances that took the deceased subject and countless other victims in Colombia . Mufioz's use of newspaper obituary photographs is an integral aspect of his practice. These images appeal to him, he has said, not for their relation to political violence, but for the way they illustrate and publicize the dead in such a routinized, predictable manner: each new day brings

Fig . 2 Osca r Mu noz , Biogra l ias (sti ll s f rom video in stallati on), 2002. Mu ltichannel video insta llation (7 min. ), vertica l proj ections with wood, aluminum sink, wooden ba se, and loudspeaker. 138 x 1 38 cm (54 % x 54 % in.).

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Fig. 3a and 3b Osca r Mu iioz, Re/ rrato, 2003. Sing lec hann el video in st all at io n (28 m i n.). P1ctur ed at top: stills fr om v ideo installati on; at bot tom : install ati on view at Sica rdi Gallery, Houston.

new death s, wit h new faces replacing and hiding those reported just the day before. In the context of war wit hin Colombia , everyday events require individuals to filter out horrific occurrences as a means of survival. He states, "We need to forget , for legitimate reasons of self- defense and health , but it is also necessary to remember . ... And I am referring now to things that happen every day in th is countr y." •0 Hence, his port rait subjects provide discernible faces that read as ind ividua ls who are unknown, but som ehow familia r within this war -torn nation. Muiio z cites Roland Barth es when discuss ing his appro ach: Barth es' idea is very relevant: th at th e true function of photography is fulfilled when th e refer ent disappears; it is at t hat point t hat phot ography acquires all of its force and value. Of the se indiv iduals wh o have disappeared and died , the only document that can atte st to their existe nce - in add ition to those mementos sometimes preserved 41 by th eir fami lies, like artic les of cloth ing or certain objects - is phot ography . The obitu ary photo, t hen, acts as th e index for the deceased individual; the face of a specifi c person - a parti cular nose, chin, and pair of eyes - is legible , and therefore is remembered . Though th e art ist declares that his work is not overtly political , his inclusion of the distinct faces

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of name less, deceased individual s lends it self to an interpretat ion based on the context of vio lence surrounding their creation . In Re/ trato (Portrait/Re-Treat) (Fig. 3), Mufioz touches upon the impo ssibility of fixing a portrait as a last ing imag e. In this larg e-sca le proje ct ion of a 28-mi nut e video that looms ove r the viewer, Mufio z draws his own likeness with a water -soake d brush on a ground of gray sto ne, creat ing a simpl e ca ricature that changes as the lines dry and disappear: a portrait recogn izab le but fluid , without the exac ting portrayal of a photograph. The likeness is a fl eet ing im age that rec urs repeate dly in the vid eo; it suggests the deliberate effort of trying to fix and save the portrait, but lik e a memory, the portrait dissolves gradually , leaving behind only the stro ng est lines of the compos ition until they, too, vani sh. Within the context of near-co nstant violence in

Fig. 4 . fro rn . J u a n M anu e l Ec hava rri a, 111• th e Re tratos se ri es, 1996. Ge latin silve r print , 35 .4 x 27.9 cm (l 3 "/ ,o x 10 "/ ,6 in.). Co ll ec t io n of the art, Sl.

24

Co lo mbia, th e futile attempts to hold onto and protect those who have been taken, killed displaced resonate in this piece. Re/ trato envisions continuous and disquieting change and incessa nt effort to regain what is lost. e

;:r

\i"\lhileMufioz and Sa!cedo both creatP_.ar.t.that.speaksto tbis idea of impermanence, the mediu tJlat each has chosen carries a different set of ex ecta ·ans f · r. In Mufioz's portraft~ the human toll of violence is legible . Salcedo's sculpture, on the other hand, does not rely on visual cues such as faces or scenes depicting violent acts; it depends instead on the viewer's deliberate co nfr ontati on and study of the work to absorb the deep-seated pain and loss endured by victims. Through co nstru cted photographs and videos that speak to the brutality in his country, artist Juan Manuel Echavarria also explores the effects wrought by the violence in Colombia. Formerly a fictlon wr it er, Echavarria began in the mid - 1990s to create photo-based, meta horical images that areat once indirectly and vividly referential. As someone whose life spans the history o a 10 encia, he see s to confront the normalization that has accompanied this persistent strife and civil violence: 1 was born in 1947. We have not had a single year of peace since then .... In 1950, it wa s the political struggle between Liberals and Conservatives throughout rural Colombia . . .. Many in the paramilitary and guerrilla forces come from familiesthat were victim s of this violence . The point is that this recurring cycle, this vicious circle of violence , has become normal .42

His first series, Retratos (Portraits) (Fig. 4), features deeply unsettling black-and-whitephotographs of chipped, cracked, and scarred mannequins found an the streets of Bogota, recalllng Colombian artist Beatriz Gonzalez's sculptures created from found objects taken from urbansites. Each piece reveals the blank stare of improbably idealized blond, blue-eyed figures, jarringly battered with gaping holes, gouges, chips, and enormous fissures surrounding their imperturbable gaze. A sense of the uncanny pervades these human likenesses. Despite their immobile features, they symbolize in graphic detail the violence suffered by the Colombian people, and as street models for the display of merchandise sold in nearby shops, they resolutely continue to "function• in spite of what they have endured. While using mannequins as a stand-in for victims may sound predictable, Echavarrfa's port rait s are anything but. Each image is shot from a perspective that sharply fixes our gazeon the irreversible damage suffered, with tape and string awkwardly mending the wounds. The Images showing the se injuries and shattered faces elicit our empathy as we recognize that the shopkeepers co ntinue to display the mannequins, as said above, because the bodies remain useful. The artist describes these portraits as indicative of his general approach: "Somehow in taking these pictures . . . I understood the direction my art should take. I would explore v,olence through metaphor :'b -- Although Echavarria's medium aiffers rrom Salceao'nculptore-tläsed pract,ce, Botnan:ists addre ss the conflict by creating works that require the viewer's sustained visual engagement to di scern the full measure of violence's effects. His photographs, and later his videos, first draw in the viewer but then become deeply unsettling as one more tully interprets the nature and this, the artist states, "without seeing imp lications of the images. The viewer exp~riences all b od, because when you work with such arnful and ch1ll1ngthemes ou have tobe very careful. Deciding how to represent violence is an important e rca E dgment." •• Echavarria's Corte de Florero (Flower Vase Cut) (Figs. 5, 6), a series of 36 large black-andwhite gelatin silver prints , exemp lifies his deliberately constructed, metaphorical approach. Based on the beautiful, late 18th - century botanical prints created by Spanish artists to document the flora enco untered du ring expeditions around the world, Echavarrfa's exquisite images of flowers are eac h presented on white ground, with the bl~sso~ la_beled below in ele~ant script.4 s The nam e given to each specimen draws from the Latrn sc1ent1~1c name and an adJective related to the artist's m emories and his impressions of violence. The t,tles, such as Maxil/aria Vorax, which translates to Voracious Orchid, and Radix lnsatiabilis (lnsatiable Root), suggest the endless, almost

?~

overwhelming presence of violence .

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Fig. 5 . 0 , q u is J u an M a nu e l Ec havarria, Negri lens is , f rom th e Corte de F_fo . ·1ver print, rero series, 199 7. Gelat,n 5 1 or t h 50 5 x 40 7 c m (19 1/ux 1 6 ,n.). N Da.kota M~ se um of Art, Grand Fork s, 2012.16.1.21.

Those memories also inform the artist's choice of subject in this series: one realizes upon studying each flower that the stem, petals , pistil , and stamen are composed of precisely arranged human bones , which unnervingly portray the flora. The sense of violence each image evokes derives not only from the human bones but from the reference Echavarria makes to a tradition in 1950s Colombia in which corpses were mutilated according to specific cortes, or cuts, each with its own name . The arranged bones imply this horrific practice . Echavarria explains: As a child, 1 remember hearing about the corte de corbata (tie) and the corte de franela (vest) .... They really were atrocious mutilations ... . 1 had to exorcise those cuts and transform that memory into something else. 46 The artist applies the language of this tradition in the series title itself: Corte de Florero is the name of a particularly infamous cut . Echavarria's flowers can be seen also as a reference to the dominant role the flower industry plays in the Colombian economy. In this regard , they make a complicated statement about the confluence of violence with national identity, legacy , and pride. Echavarria 's attempt to confront the reality and effects of Colombian conflict is also powerfully revealed in his video La Bandeja de Boffvar (Bolivar's Platter) (Fig. 7). Based on a series of ten photographs, the nearly four-minute film begins with the image of a beautiful, ornate platter bearing flowers and the words "Republi ca de Colombia para siempre" (Republic of Colombia Forever). The

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Fig. 6 Ju an M L anu e t Ec h . ug ubr is f ava rrr a, Or quis s . , rom th e C eri es , 1997 G _ort e de Flo rero so.s x 40 7 . e l a t ,n s ilve r print Dakota M. cm (l 9 1/ox 16 in ) No rt t,' 2 use um o f A.1 .. D12.1s. 1 _13 _ t, Grand Fo rk s,

dish is a reprod ucti on of the por celain platter commemorating Colombian independence given to Simo n Bo li var, legendary Fat her of the Nation . In the successive images, the priceless platter is broke n, t he sound reverberating in the viewer 's ears, then smashed into further pieces, then shards, t hen p ulve ri ze d int o a pile of dust that , in the final image , appears as a snowy mound of cocaine. lt dramatica lly po rt rays th e violence , the enduring causes of narco -trafficking, and the devastating consequences to the nation , its heritage , and its citizenry. "Bolivar's Platter represents the fragmentat ion of a nati on," says Ec havarria .47No face, no flesh, no body or blood appears; but with precise ly const ructe d images , the artist depicts what violence destroys . In a natio n plagued by mor e than a half- century of violence , art occupies a distinctive place. A war fue led by d ive rse protago nist s and competing interests; a shifting set of players and controls both w it hin and ou tside t he leg al system ; an ongoing process of attempted negotiations; and the cont inuing occurre nce of displacem ents, disappearances , and murders: these are the condit ions that do min ate everyd ay life in Colombia , and they are the conditions that underlie the vi sua l projects of artists such as Salcedo , Mufio z, and Echavarria , who attempt to contend with the horror and unreality of j ust what all of thi s means. "Life in Colombia has many brutal aspects," Sa lcedo has said . "Re-work ing them allows us to survive because otherwise we would be in total chaos. Art is a necessity t hroughout the planet but it takes on a greater sense of urgency in a

country at war." 48

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Fig. 7 Juan M an ue l Echavarria, La Bandeja de Bo li var (stil ls from video in st allatio n), 1999. Sing le-c han nel in sta llat ion (3 :14 min. ), 28 x 36 c m (11 x 14 rn.). Co llec ti o n of th e art is t.

1. Art historian Charle s Merewe th er, one of the first to publish on Salcedo 's practice, and historian Daniel Pecaut who ha lyzed th e broader cont ext of Colombia n politi cal violence, both have written about these conditio ns of state terror. See Charles M:r~ "Zo nes of Marked lnstabi lit y: Wom an and th e Space of Emergence," in Rethinking Borders , ed. John C. Welchman (Minne II : _ Univer_sity of Minne sota Press, 1996) 1118; and_Daniel Pecaut , " From th~ Banality of Violence to Real Terror: The Case of Colo'::::ia~ 111 Soc1e11es of Fear: The Lega cy of CIVIi War, V1olence, and Terror m Laim Amenca, ed. Kees Koonings and Dirk Kruijt (London· Zed Boo ks, 1999) , 141- 42, 147. Pec~ut sugg est s that , beginning in 1980, int ense violence became so prevalent in Colombia !hat lt was seen as an everyday :,act of lifo: IT)he marked contm u1t1es in the forms of v1ole~ce led that _violence tobe perce ived as given, rather t han som eth,ng new (142). W1th regard to the d,sappearan~es and the 1mposs1bil1tyof bunal, the paramilitaries, for example,would d1sm e_ mb er and h,de t he bod y part s of tho se they had forc,_bly d1sappeared, thereby making it difficult for a later investlgatlonof th e cn me. In 2006, the Colomb1an gove rnm ent began the first sustained national searc h for the missing. See also StephanFerry, Violento logy: A Man ual of the Colomb ian Confli ct (New York: Umbrage, 2012), 86. ' 2. Colombia : Violencia y Democracia , lnforme pr esentado al Ministerio de Gobierno, ed. Gonzalo Sanchez G6mez (Bogotä: Unlverslded Nac iona l d e Colombia - Financiaci6 n Colciencias, 198 7), 9-14, 17- 30. 3. Unlik e Holoc aust studies, the field of violentology is particular to Colombia. The set of conditions !hat have fostered violence_,. ongo ing and e~acerbated by t he str uctur e and negotiation of power in the country as weil as by the growth of the narcotlcs lndustry. See Mary Rolda n, Blood and Fire: La V1olenc1am Ant,oqwa , Colomb,a, 1946 - 1953 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002), 8 --83. 2 2 See also "Lo s Vio lent6 Iogo s," Sem ana, Sept ember 15, 2007 , 10- 12. One of the first such groups of violent6logos was foundedIn 1987 at Universida d Nacional de Colom bia in Bogota in the lnstituto de Estud ios Pol/tico s y Relaciones lnternacionales (IEPRI).Thefr reco mm endat ions we re not always heeded by state leaders , but the work of th ese scholars both in Bogota andin centers throughout th e cou ntry has had an ongo ing role in advi sing local and federal leaders. Mary Roldan has described her weekly meetlngs wlth schol ars at Universidad de Anti oqui a in Mede ll/n between 1989 and 1992, during which they sought to resolve the recent wavesof terror in the region , fueled by dru g lord Pablo Escoba r and the paramilitaries. The spate of violent attacks included assasslnatlons of policem en, po liti cal leaders, judge s, and prof essors, among others. The proposals !hat the violent6logos drafted and presentedto th e mayor of t he ci ty led to th e scholars them selves becoming targets of the narcos. See Roldan, Blood and Fire, 282- 83 , 4. Sanchez G6me z, Colo mb ia: Violencia y Democracia , 19-21. 5. Colombia is di vided into 32 adm inistrativ e districts known as "departments." 6. Sanc hez G6mez, Colombia : Violencia y Demo cracia, 84- 86. 7. Peca ut , "From the Banality of Vio lence to Real Terror," 161. The Thousand Days' War was a civil war brought on by a sharp decllne in w orld co ffee pri ces. A maj or Colombi an export, coffee was central to the nation's econo my. A revolt by the liberals led to partlsan fighting that degenera ted into gu errilla warfare and, ultimately , one of Colombia's most intense periods of violence. An estlmated one hundred tho usand death s result ed, out of a population of four million. 8. Sibylla Brodzi nsky and Dan Robert s, "John Kerry Holds Unprecedented Peace Talks with Colombian Farc Rebels," TheGuardian, March 21, 2016 ; "Co lombi a's Sec ond - Largest Rebel Group Joins Peace Talks with Government," The New York Times, March 30 2016; "Colom bia- Farc Peace Talks Delayed over 'Differences,' " BBC News, March_,24,20 16; Sfüylla Brodzinsky and Jonathan "Colomb ia and Farc rebels sign histori c ceasefire deal to end 50-year co nfl, ct, The Guardian, June 23, 2016; "Peace,at last, In Colombi a," The Economi st, J une 25 , 201 6; and Nicholas Casey, "Colombia and FARC Reach Deal to End the Americas' LongestWar," The New York Tim es, August 24, 2016. 9. Marco Palacios, Be tw een Legi tima cy and Violenc e: A Histo ry of Colombia , 1875-2002, Irans . Richard Stoller (Durham, N.C.:Duke University Press, 2006) , 140- 41; Plinio Apuley o Mendo za, "Colombi a de ayer a h_oy," in Cantos Cuentos_Colombianos: ArteColombiano Cont empo raneo/ Cont emp orary Colombi an Art, ed. Hans- Michael Herzog _(Zuri ch: Daro.~~Lat_mamerica ; Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004) 308 318· and Gonzalo Sanchez G6m ez, " The Violence : An lnterpretIve Synthes1s, In V1olence m Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Hi; tori c~I Perspec tive, ed. Charles Bergqui st, Ricardo Pefiaranda, and Gonzalo_Sanchez G6mez (Wilmington, Dei.:Scholarly Reso urces Book s, 1992), 76- 83. Sanchez G6m ez gives a nuanced and deta,led analys1s of the players and factors behind the erupti on and continua t ion of La Violencia. 10. Sanchez G6mez, "The Violence," 88- 91. reclente/ 11 . Mendo za, "Colomb ia de ayer a hoy," 320; and Fernan E. Gonzalez, "Hacia el trasfondo hist6rico de la violencia colombiana The Historical Background of Colombi a's Rece nt Violence ," in Herzog, Cantos Cuento s Colombianos, 298. .. . ., 12. Mendoza, "Colo m bia de ayer a hoy," 320. 13 . Gonzalez, "Hacia el t rasfo ndo histori co," 28 5, 298; Mendoz _a, Colomb 1a de ayer a hoy, 308, 318; a_nd Gonzalo ~anchez Gdmez, "Roo ts of th e Confli ct ," in Sanchez G6mez, Colombia: Violenc ,a y Democrac,a , 19. Sa_nchez„G6m~zc_Ite! the states 1950 burnlng _n I~ wh,ch the army left an and brut al expe llin g of Indi ans in th e Ort ega and Natagaima _Reserve, the 1952 operat,on of pac1f1cat1o estim ated 1,500 co rpses in th e rural area of Las Rocas in Tol1ma,as w_ell as other examples. A_she ~xplaons: La V1olencia was charthe art ~f causing pain. Not acterized by ritu als of terro r, a litur gy and solemnizatio n of de~th, wh,ch required an_apprent1cesh1p 111 only the ki lling, but th e manner of killing obeyed a sinister log1c, a calculus of suffenng and terror. The mut1lat1on and profanatlon of bodie s was a way 10 extend th e work of conqu ering , looting and devastatong enem y temtory; th_e''.:'pressIon caused by hacked, skinn ed and burned corpses seem ed to form part of the mental la_ndscape of a sco rched earth policy. • 14 . Sanchez Gom ez po int s out th at thi s brutaiity occ urred at a t_,m: 1nwh,ch Colomb1a cla,med to be one of the most Cathollc fcou nt riesl in th e wo rld"; see Sanchez G6m ez, "Roots of the Conflict , 19. 15. lbid . 16. Gonzalez, "Hacia el trasfon do hist6r ico," 29 9. . _ , . . . 17. The se areas include Ar auca in th e east; Orient e Ant1oqueno, east of Mede/1111, ,n the south, and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta,

watts'.

north east of Cart age na in th e north ; ibid ., 296- 97. . . . . B' Leg ,·tima cy and Violence 190. Palacios expla ins the emergence of the guemlla groups of the 1960s· 18. lb1d.; and Pa1ac,os, e 1ween ' · · f h d. r d L'b · • .. • .. . rrill as of the 1960s w ere several things at once: the contonuat,on_o t e most ra ,ca Ize , eral foghtongspor,t of The _revolut,ona _ry g: e f part of the Colombian /eft to the Liberal-Conservat,ve oligarchy's monopoly of legalpoliticsunder t he hig h V,olenc,a, 1 edrespo nseto . bring th e Colombian peasantry into a socia list proj ect from which theyhadbeenexcluded." the Nati onal Fro nt, an an opp or uni 1Y 10 19 . Gonzalez, " Hac ia el tr asfondo hist6rico," 299. . . G tra La Soci edad (Bogata: Espasa, 2001) , 43. 2 0. Daniel Pecaut, uerra con d V"olence 190 . and Human Rights Watch, Colombia 's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary 21. Palac,os, Bet ween Leg1t1macy an 1 , , . 1 Par tnership and the Unit ed States (1996), ci ted in Ferry, V,olento lvogyl ' 6t6 • n. · . .. and Violence 190; and Ferry, 10en o1ogy, 66 • 22. Palac1_o s, Bet ween Leg ,t,m ~cy G ( .n Unid~d Nacional de Fiscalias para la Justicia y la Paz, March 31, 2011. 23. F,scal,a Genera l de la N~ci~:•def ! ~~as paramilitares y narcotrafico en Colombia. Origen , desarrollo y consolidaci6n. EIcasode 24. Car los M1;~ 1_na Gallego, 'Aud EI Uberri~o . ed. Ivan Cepeda and Jorge Rojas (Bogo ta: Random House Mondadori , 2008), 45; "Hay Puerto Boyaca, in A_las p uert as o~ie rno „ EI Tiempo , Octob er 1, 1987; and Pecaut, Guerra contra La Sociedad , 153. 140 grupo s param,litar es. Mmg v · ' ·a Y Demo cracia 9 2- 93. The commission reco mmended the creation of a judicial panel to 25 Sanchez G6me z Colom b,a: 101enc, ' 1 ·b I h · · 1· · ' . fon s taking place in the country , as we I as a tri una to stop t e cromonaIty of thesegroups. investig ate the /arge number o 1assass1na 1 26. Ferry, Violen tology , 86- 88.

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27 _ Herbert Braun , Our Guerri/las, Our Sidewalks: A Journey into the Violence of Colombia (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and littlefield , . . . " 2003) , 176- 8 1. 2 8. Ferry, Violentology, 8; and Roldan, Blood and Fire, 2_91.Roldan explains, As was also true during_/a Violencia (at least in Antioquia) , ·olence in co nt emporary Colombia is th e respon s1bil1ty of both the left and th e nght , but the maJority of tho se currently displaced ~'ave been forced to mov e by the prese nce of right-w ing paramilitary group s, whi le leftist groups (the equiva lent of /a Violencia' s guerri lla groups) are respon sible for approximately a third of all d1splac::ament s, and th e Colombian Army for less than 5 percent." She refers to Larry Rohter's October 21, 1999 , New York T1mes art ,cle, Cns,s 111Colomb,a as Civil Strife Uproot s Peasants." Both Roldan (Blood and Fire, 282- 83, 286, 29 1- 94) and Ferry (V,olentology, 18, 26) c,te various factor s and inherent con dition s, as weil as stru ctur es and players, that link the curr ent vio lence to the mid-20t h- century history of violence in Colombia. 29 _ Jose Roca, "Ausencia/Evidencia: Jo se Alejandro Restrepo, Oscar Mufioz , Teresa Margo lles," Co/umna de Arena 48 (2003). Roca quotes from Sylvere Lotring er, "Repre se nta ci6n de Violencia/Vio lencia de Representac i6n," in his int erview with Ruben Gallo in TRANS (3/4) Telesymposium, 1997. 30. Roca, "Ausencia/Evi dencia," 3- 5. 31 _ Santiago Olmo, " When Drawing on Wai er ls More Than Just Metapher ," in Oscar Munoz : Documento s de la Amnesia (Badajoz, Spain: Museo Extremefio e lberoame rica no de Art e Contemporaneo, 2009), 155. 2 3 _ lbid ., 155. Olmo add s th at th ere are important and effect,ve programs, such as tho se produced by radio station s, that serve as the sole comm unication betw een cap ti ves and their famili es. Noneth eless, he says, th e popu lation c hooses to keep th ese realities removed from daily life wh en possible, as a means of co ping with the vio lence. 33. Gloria Zea, "Present aci6n/ Presentation, " in Arte Y Violencia en Colombia desde 1948 (Bogota: Museo de Arte Mod erno de Bogota; Grupo Editorial Norma, 1999), 8- 9. 34. lbid. , 8. 35. Larry Rohter, "In the Trauma of Barbarity, Art Speaks Out," The New York Times, Octob er 17, 1999. 36. Oscar Mufioz, "Oscar Mufioz, " in Guerra Y Pa: Simposio Sobre La Situaci6n Social, Politi ca, y Arti stica en Colombi a, ed. Eugenio Valdes Figue roa (Zurich: Daros- Latinoam erica AG, 2006), 113. 37. Oscar Mufio z, quoted in co nversation with Hans- Michael Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombianos, 243. 38. lbid ., 240. The artist goes on to co ntra st the situation in Colombia wit h the violence th at artist Christian Boltanski addresses in his work, saying that the latter's use of photograph s of Jewi sh chi ldren cou ld not occur in Colombia because th e victims are without faces or names, and establi shing m emorie s is diffi cult to do. 39. Lupe Alvarez, "Disso lution and Phantasmagoria, " in Oscar Munoz : Documentos de la Amnesia, 177. 40. Mufio z, quoted in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombiano s, 246. Critic Santiago Olmo and historia n Daniel Pecaut , among oth ers, di scuss the extent to whi ch living require s forg etti ng, to ensure survival under condition s of extended, brut al conflict and uncertainty . See 4 Olmo, "When Drawing on Water ls More Than Just Metaphor ," 155- 57; and Pecaut, Guerra contra La Sociedad , 137- 39, 211. 1. Muno z, quoted in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombianos , 246. See also Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflec tions on Photog raphy, tr ans. Richard Howard (New York: Farrar, Strau s and Giroux, 198 1), 78- 79. 42. Ana Tisco rnia , "Juan Man uel Ec havarria," Irans. Santiago Giraldo, in Juan Manue/ Echavarria: Mouth s of Ash/ Bocas de Ceniza (Milan : Chart a; Grand Forks: North Dakota Museum of Art, 2005), 72. 43. Laurel Reuter, "Requiem for a Country," in Juan Manuel Echavarria: Mouth s of Ash/ Bocas de Ceniza, 10. 44. Ju an Manu el Echavarria, quot ed in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombianos, 190- 91. 45. Tiscornia , "Juan Manuel Echavarria," 66- 67. Ti scornia dis cusses the bot anica l expedition s from th e late 18th and early 19th cen turi es and mentions a book that was an inspi ration to Echavarria's work : The Real Expedici6n Botanica (Royal Botanical Expedition), which reco unt s a trip led by Jo se Celestino Muti s in th e Kingdom of New Granada. See also Ana Maria Reyes, "Ruptur as y mir adas sensacio nalistas: Reflexiones fotografi cas de Juan Manue l Echavarria sobre la violencia en Colombia (Disrupting the Sensation alistic Gaze: Juan Manuel Echavarria's Photographie Reflectio ns on Vio lence in Colombia)." in Bocas de Ceniza: Juan Manu el Echavarria (Bogota: Valenzuela y Klenner Art e Contemporaneo, 1999). 46. Echavarria, quoted in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombianos, 180- 84. See also Reuter, in Ju an Manu e/ Echavarria: Mouth s of Ash/ ßocas de Ceniza, 4, 28. The bones used by th e artist were hum an and acquired in Bogota . In reference to the corte s, th e arti st goes on to describe th e co nt emp orary practi ces of th e paramilitaries as simi lar in term s of th e freq uent disembowelment they wou ld und ertake so that cor pses would sink when thr ow n into the river. 47. Reuter, Juan Manu el Echavarria: Mouth s of Ash/ Bocas de Ceniza, 25. 48. Doris Salcedo, quoted in Herzog , Cantos Cuentos Colombianos, 168.

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Salcedo's lnfluences:

Artists, Works, Practices

Salcedo's project has been informed by the works and practices of artists Beatriz Gonzalez,Joseph Beuys, and Marcel Duchamp. From Gonzalez's use of everyday materials, to Beuys's concept of "social sculpture," to Duchamp's readymades, the issues and ideas explored by each have factored in Salcedo's formation and evolution as an artist. Looking at how she interweaves their ideasin various and subtle ways offers a telling perspective on her aesthetic choices. Taken together, these influences provide a point of departure for better understanding Salcedo's approach. While she is most recognized for her sculpture and installation art, Salcedo began by studying painting at the Universidad de Bogota Jorge Tadeo Lozano. She has described her painting studies there as thorough and critica l to her formation as an artist. (She found the sculpture program and performance-related curricu lum to be less rigorous.) Fora short time, her coursework included the design of theater sets, an experience that she says led to her interest in linking art and politics. Especially importa nt to Salcedo were her studies with Colombian artist Beatriz Gonzalez (b. 1938), whom she describes as a painter as weil as an art historian deepfy trained in theory. At the time , Gonzalez was experimenting in ways unlike any other artist in Colombia, and she provided Sa/cedo with a thorough and rigorous intellectual grounding. 1 fn particu/ar, Gonzafez's incorporation of photographs documenting actua/ events and the /ayering of different kinds of information made an impact on Sa/cedo. "You cou/d see how she went about devefoping a piece of work superimpo sing /ayers of information that she wou/d bring in from different fields of know/edge, not only from the pictoria/ ," Sa/cedo said. "/ feel that this mode/ of working was essent ial for my deve/opment." 2 This fusion of information conveyed through a compfex overlay of diverse materia/s and means figures in Sa/cedo's project from its ear/iest stages; however, her visua/ /anguage departs from that of her teacher. Gonza/ez creates figurative paintings , with bright/y toned pigments, that depict art historicaf masterpieces or /oca/ re/igiou s or po/itica/ icons. By the /ate 1960s, she began to render these

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Fig.1 Beatriz Gonzalez , Pho to Studio 1, 1967. Oil on ca n vas, 70 x 80 c rn (27 % x 3 1 ½ in .). Private co llec ti o n.

subjects on enamel inserted within and framed by a piece of domestic furniture . Gonzalez's practice has explored the personal (often gender-specific) and popular subjects deemed inappropriate for art exhibited in public museums and galleries. As Ana Maria Reyes, an art historian currently at work on an exhaustive study of the artist, states: "Gonzalez called attention to private, diverse, and hybrid visual cultural practices and proposed them as legitimate sources for a mod ern art exhibition . .. . [She] thus distanced her sources from their 'proper' context: the privacy of the home , and an intimate relation with their owners ." 3 In her second solo exhibition, held at the Museum of Modern Art in Bogota in 1967, she presented 14 paintings that demonstrate this approach (Fig. 1). Each conveys elements of popular culture: three include commercial photography of children; one portrays a family in an image taken from a newspaper photograph ; nine are based on prints and illustrations of devotional scenes made popular by the Cali-based commercial imprint Graficas Molinari ; and the last , Lassie, is based on the U.S. television series then shown in Colombia about the eponymous collie dog and community hero. The images she re-created on the canvases stemmed from the new spaper clippings she collected from the culture , crime, and tabloid pages and the commercial photographs , popular prints, and stamps she gathered in her st udio . By including photo corners and matting in these works, as if the clippings themselves are cut and pasted instead of re-created with paint on the canvas, Gonzalez clearly references th e id ea of scra pbook and album making. Private life was not considered an appropriate subject in the public sphere in Colombia until the late 1940s, with the emergence of popular leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan; thu s to include personal subjects in a painting was to upset social as weil as aesthetic co nventions. • Not only were Gonzalez's themes commonplace , but as Reyes points out, they wer e subjects associated with the feminine. Horne life , children , devotional images, a dog starring in a television drama : these embodied "maternal , familial, and pious subject matter the realm of the feminine within Catholic Marin ideology." 5 The reference to scrapbooking also calls to mind a traditionally feminine hobby . Critics objected to her paintings above all for their portrayal of popular subjects, not necessarily for their gender affiliations. Nevertheles s, the feminine realm was an uncultivated subject of private life that Gonzalez's work brought into the public sphere, appropriating and re- presenting what had been deemed unacceptable for display in cult ural institutions. Critical response to Gonzalez's works varied. One reviewer, Luis Fernando Lucerna, described her work as deliberately including objects and colors representative of "our milieu " and of the

32

"since re observation of our people and of their 'bad taste."' 6 Although generally favorable, many reviews simi larly positioned Gonzalez's work as concerned with incorporating kitsch, the "lowbrow" core of ge neral Colomb ian culture. As a result, her pieces were not readily embracedby th e country's traditional cultur al leaders. This dichotomy of critica l perspective persisted in the reception of the work that immediately fo llowed, two paintings on tin that became precursors to her more we\1-known furniture works. Apunt es para la Historia Extensa de Colombia Tomo I and Tomo II portray the two central heroes in Colomb ia's histor y - Simon Bolivar and Francisco de Paula Santander, respectively. Set on an ova l ground, they are rendered in Gonzalez's characteristic flat, simple forms of rich tones, as pared down and co lorful as ca rtoon figures (Fig. 2). Critics associated the artist's visual language w ith the pop art movement in the United States, the bright pigments, clear lines, and shapes reca llin g Roy Lichtenstein's figures or Andy Warhol's portraits. Because these two portraits are painted on tin, t he surface shine and absence of visible brushstrokes give them an appearanceof commercia l art, unlike her works on canvas, in which brushstrokes fill the surface and the unique nature of the piece is immediately apparent. Given the significance of the subject matter,critical response was dramatic : some applauded her critique of the nation's official history through such portrayals of iconic f ig ures, while others \abeled them ugly, the colors putrid. Gonzalez was even accused of plagiar ism. 7 In the 1970s, before and du ring the time when Salcedo was her student, Gonzalez beganto create painted sculptures using domestic furniture-a bed, vanity, nightstand, or table-to frame images of subj ects with art historical, politica\, or religious significance. And it is this furniture work for which Gonzalez has received most attention in both Colombia and the rest of the world. Beginning with her submission to the 1970 Coltejer Art Biennia\, Naturaleza Casi Muerta (Fig. 3)-a faux wood - decorated metal bed with an enamel painting that depicts a suffering Christ filling the base - Gonzalez created a series of what were deemed "pop art" portrayals incorporated within pieces of furniture. The depiction of the iconic figure in Naturaleza Casi Muerta reproduces one of the most venerated images in Bogota, the Fallen Christ of Montserrat, a famous sculpture In th e Basilica of Montserrat that represents the biblical image of the Fallen Christ of the ViaCrucls (Fig. 4). This image was weil known to Colombian viewers at the time through the popular Graficas Molinari print , which depicts the Christ sculpture crowned in thorns, lying againsta crossstrewn

Fig. 2a and 2b Beat riz Go nza lez, Apun tes p ara la Historia Extensa d e Colombi a To m o I (lef t ) and Tomo II (ri ght ), 1967. Ena m e l o n met al p late, 10 0 x 8 0 x 8 c m (39 3/, x 3 1 ½ x 31/oin.). Pri vat e co ll ec ti o n .

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with roses .8 The sculpture succinctly demonstrates what Gonzalez suggests when she describes her furniture pieces as "a representation of a representation." 9 In this and her other works that ju xtapose paintings of religious, soc ial, national, or art historical icons irr everent ly rendered on enamel with the apparent simpl icity of "paint by numbers ," Gonza lez represents an im age framed in an elabo rat ely dramatic manner, one that strike s the viewer as unexpected and unfathomable. The meta! furniture painted with trompe l'oei l wooden sections and the brashly toned, flat, and strangely unsettling depict ions of recognizable subject s confront expectations of what art is, where it belongs, and the role of furniture as either frame or subject. Although the international juror s at the Coltejer Art Biennial did not champion this work, Latin American critics celebrated the local furniture and her now recognizable brand of pop art featuring colorfu l depictions on enamel. Writers such as Marta Traba, the leading Colombi an critic at the time , deemed it a new Latin American avant-garde, regionally specific but import ant for it s integration of fresh language , materials, and ideas. 10 As in Naturaleza Casi Muerta, many of Gonzalez's furniture scu lpture s were made of meta! painted with faux wood grain; others were constr ucted of act ual wood, their warm tone and surface sharp ly contrast ing with the bright, flat enamel image attached to the frames. Traba related the two types of furnishings to distinct social classes in Colombia: the meta! works, she said, engaged

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Fig. 3 Beatr iz Gonzalez, Naturaleza Casi Mu e rt a , 1970. Sy nth e ti c e na m e l o n sh ee t m e t a l asse mb le d f u rn i tur e, 125 x 1 25 x 95 c m (49 3/ ,o x 49 3/ ,o x 37 3/sin.). Mu seo de Arte M ode rn o de Bogota, 256.

Fig. 4 An imag e o f th e Chri st of M ont se rr at, as depi c t ed on a Co lombia n sta mp fr om th e lat e 1960s. Gonzalez co llec ted th is st amp and saved it in her pe rsonal arc hi ves.

th e low er-c lass masses, while the pieces constructed of wood were connected with the middle classes. Gonzalez herself later expressed that she chose the wooden pieces from secondhand st ores as a deliberat e critique and statement of poor taste-a comment that substantiates the Colombi an perception of her work as an attack on the elitist aesthetic dominating the country's cultur al institution s and leadership. Viewed this way, the furniture sculptures convey a layered address of soc ial and cultural norms generated by the paintings and subjects, as well as by the co mp osition of th e furniture. 11 Like Salcedo, Gonzalez chooses furniture that is not only secondhand, but belongs in the most priv at e room s of a hom e, such as the bedroom and dressing room. By focusing on furnishings co mm on t o th e spaces where one's intimate life unfolds , and by placing her vibrant enamel paint ings within a bed or bureau and then installing it in a gallery for all to see, Gonzalez makes pub lic what is usually hidden or private. Moreover, Reyes points out that given the national con text, "emph asizing th e private world in the public sphere had important connotations about the polit ical cultur e in Colombia and its mechanism of gender and class exclusion." Her iconographic c hoices set within bedroom furniture "call attention to the pervasiveness of Catholic ideology in th e privat e world of int imacy, sexuality, and gender constructs," Reyessays. "The bed as reference to th e domesti c and private interior is central to Gonzalez's framing of problems and issues." 12 Both Salcedo and Gonzalez also emphasize the importance of close looking by their viewers. Gonzalez fo und th e "visual trickery " of the faux wood grain (painted by artisans) tobe a means by w hich she co uld incite viewers to examine her pieces carefully, creating a lively tension between t he tro mp e l'oeil wooden surface and the colorful enamel image it frames. She commissioned a kitc hen ta ble in t his style, into which she inserted her 1970 work La Ultima Mesa (The Last Table} (Fig. 5), her rendering of Da Vinci 's The Last Supper . Like Naturaleza Casi Muerta, this work is a "represe ntatio n of a representation ." In each, painted meta! conveys the likeness of wood, just as her pai nt ing on enamel conveys th e likeness of a famous image. Hence, the works confront t he issue of vision as a process heavily influenced by the cultural context in which a work isseen. A Colombi an viewer, for instance , would associate the kind of furniture in Gonzalez's work with vendo rs fr om a part icular area in Bogota and with working-class consumers. 13 These kindsof refere nces resonat ed deeply with Salcedo. The visual constru ct fostered by Gonzalez implicates the viewer not only through physical prox im ity to t he piece, but through the mode of perceiving the work. Rather than the traditional approac h of viewing a painting hung at eye level on a wall, one must bend or crouch beside Gonzalez's f urnitu re t o look down at the painting on the bed, in the table top, or in the place where

35

the mirror sits within a vanity. The viewer is forced into a kind of physical interaction with the work. As one hovers over the piece of furniture and peers down at these devotional images, the viewer assumes a posture that, as Reyes has stated, conveys a kind of disrespect for these sacred figures .14 The pieces, therefore, pointedly criticize established means of presentation and the placement of revered images by inserting these representations within a piece of furniture - specifica lly, furniture taken from the space of intimate daily life displayed in a public space - and situating them where the viewer's body reclines. Moreover , the image is depicted with a simp licity of form and color more typical of popular media. By various means, Gonzalez confronts the Colombian cu ltural and social elite as weil as her wider audience, contesting accepted artistic practices with subjects, materials, and a visual language that juxtapose disparate worlds of thought. lt would be an oversimplification to suggest that Salcedo incorporates household furniture in her works simp ly because Gonzalez , an influential teacher and mentor, did the same. There are clear differences in their approaches: Salcedo creates scu lptur es and installations with sometimes multiple chairs or tables, and no painted, figurative element is contained within the furniture; in addition, the surfaces of Salcedo's works bear material insertions - cement, cloth , and hair - not brightly rendered lik enesses of famous figures. Nonetheless, Salcedo absorbed important visual lessons from Gonzalez, such as a thorough foundation in painting and the techniques of incorporating unexpected forms and elements. She also drew from her teacher's deep grounding in art historical ideas, artistic theories, and deliberate efforts to generate art's role in socia l dialogue . Gonzalez creates works that engage directly with Colombian sociopo liti cal culture, and that type of engagement has also figured prominently in Salcedo's practice. lnd eed , this foundation and specific approach to art making contributed to Salcedo 's interest in the ideas of art ist Joseph Beuys. After completing her degree in Bogota, Salcedo traveled the world for a year, viewing sculptures from various cu ltur es and eras, from modernist and contemporary pieces in the Western world to the monumental works of various non -Western cu ltur es, which she came to prefer . In particular, works she encountered in Egypt, specifically the monuments related to death , enormously influenced her. 15 Following this broad exposure to the active presence and place of scu lptur e throughout the world, Salcedo began a graduate program in scu lptur e at New York University in the early 1980s .16

36

Fig. 5 . . M sa Be a t ri z Go nza lez, La Ult im a ~ ; ~ 197 0 . Ena m e l a n lam inat ed meta 205 asse m b led me t al furnitur e, 105 x x 75 c m (41 5/,o x 8 0 '1/,o x 29½ in .). Tat e, n e ri ca n I A Lo nd o n , Prese nt ed by t h e of Fu nd f o r th e Tat e Ga ll ery, cou rt esy t he Lati n A m eri ca n Ac qu isiti o ns co m m itt ee 201 3, T14223.

Her decision to pursue gradu ate work at NYU stemmed from a desire to live and study in downtown New York, ami d the art world and galleries . She came to the city deeply interested in the artistic project of Josep h Beuys (1921- 1986) after seeing an exhibition of his multiples in Bogota. While in New York, she intensively studied his theories and oeuvre, and his work became a focus of her graduate progra m in sculpture; she recalls that his pieces were installed in various institutions and his ideas were widely discu ssed and circulating in the city.17Choosing his work "as a point of depart ure," 18Salcedo found in Beuys a means of rethinking the tradition of modern ist sculpture and add ressing the sociopolitical capacity of the medium . As she explains: Encountering his work revealed to me the concept of "social sculpture," the possibility of giving form to societ y through art. l became passionately drawn to creatingthat form , which led me to fi nd sculpture meaningful , because merely handling material was meaning less to me. Placing a small object on a base seemed completely vacuous. That is why Beuys was so important to me. 19 Moreover, she points to t he t hematic weight with which he charges materials, imbuing them with meaning and making possibl e an integration of politics and sculpture: "l found the possibility of integrating my political awareness with sculpture . 1discovered how materials have the capacity to convey specific meanings." 20 The rigorous educatio n in art history and theory that Salcedo received under Beatriz Gonzalez, in which the philosophers Hege l, Walter Benjamin , Emmanuel Levinas, and Theodor Adorno, among others, figured pro minent ly, prepared her weil for the issues and philosophy underpinning Beuys's practice. 21Salcedo's proje ct grew out of the idea that the material expression she created cou ld address po litica l vio lence in the conte xt of the victim 's and the viewer's experience. Her art was tobe situated in th e world , exposing the realities and truths of those who have endured too much in silence. As a result, Salcedo was drawn to Beuys's approach for the ways that it created a scu lptura l traditio n in sharp co ntr ast to the modernist legacy.22His emphasis on sculpture's sociopolitical space and role, as weil as on the significance of unexpected , everyday materials as part of scu lpture's work as an agent in society, are key elements in Salcedo 's own practice. Beuys's work ranged fro m drawings , prints , and sculptures to installations, multiples, and performances . Later in his career, he became politically active in his native Germany, initially creating counter-instit ut ion al fra m eworks for timely social and political debate, then directly for po lit ica l parties (he was a Green Party candidate) and activist organizations. By the early 197Os, he described publ ic discussion and debate of issues as the realization of his idea of social sculpture .23He believed t hat creativity was central to his idea, and that in directing these political disc ussions his address was arti st ic. Consider this explanation from a 1972 interview in which he was asked if his wo rk wit h t his fo cus was a form of political action: For me it's an artist ic act ion. More and more we proceed from the assumption of self-determination, from human freedom as a creative, that is, also an artistic point of departure. so it is a cu ltural questi on in th e fir st place ... all human knowledge comes from art. Every capacit y com es fr om the art isti c capacity of man , which means tobe active, creat ively.24 Add to t his stance t he cult of personality that he encouraged throughout his career - from his ear ly 196Os performances (or "actions ") that teil the story of his survival as a wounded German soldier in World w ar 11 , to his use of unconventional materials such as feit and fat , to his embrace of symbo lic creatures such as th e coyote or hare in his installations and performances - and one sees just how formida ble was Beuys's presence and practice. Social sculpture was a kind of act ivist aesthetic project for Beuys, and he believedin an expanded notion of art in w hich all individuals are artist s. In the catalogue of his first major U.S. museum retrospective, curate d by Caroline Tisdall at New York's Guggenheim Museum in 1979, Beuys proposed that sculpture and t he idea of sculpting can be expanded to include different

37

Fig . 6 Jo se ph Beuy s, S tuhl mit Fell, 1963. Wood, wax, an d m etal, 100 x 47 x 42 c m (39 5/10 x 18 ½ x 16 ½ in .). Block Be uy s, Hessisc h es La nd es mu se um Darm s t adt, Germany , BB 42.

outcomes and im material means, and can be accessible to everyone . Our thoughts and the word s we speak , he argued, can serve as invisible materials used by all to shape the world in which we live .25 Tisdall interprets these ideas as "a widened concept of art in which the whole process of living itself is the creative act ... it implies an intensified feeling for life , for the processes of living , and for the structures of society." 26 She further explains: "For Beuys this process of personally und erstanding and discovering the world began with sculpture, or more precisely, with material. ... Material is substance, both carrier and conveyor of meaning." 27 Here we see the unmistakable influence that Beuys's ideas have had on Salcedo's practice . The meaning of materials played a significant role within Beuys's concept of social sculpture, and it bore particularly symbolic weight within the context of post - World War II Germany . As Gene Ray proposes in his essay "Joseph Beuys and the After-Auschwitz Sublime," the artist's work wa s a project of mourning; and within this construct, Beuys's chosen materials and objects - feit, tat, and flashlights, for example - carry connotations to German history both during and after the war.28 In a 1998 essay reconsidering Beuys's work, Benjamin Buchloh states, "All of Beuys' materials are no doubt derived from the shambles of postwar Germany, in the literal sense of a culture in shambles, a culture of debris." 29 Through his actions and sculptures, Beuys repeatedly used feit and tat because, the artist explained, the materials are integral to his personal history and survival du ring the war when he was shot down over Crimea and found by Tartars, whom he credited with saving him: "They covered my body in tat to help it regenerate warmth , and wrapped it in feit as an insulator to keep the warmth in." 30 Regardless of the veracity of this particular tale or the colorful, seem ingly mythical life story Beuys repeatedly presented, the artist's choice to

38

frequent ly use fat and feit in his practice bears a sociopolitical significance integral to his social sculpture project, and one t hat has registered with Salcedo and other artists. 3 1 Certainly, the materia ls and the larger -th an- life biography Beuys presented have been so tightly interwoven that one's percept ion of his wo rk is f ueled by this joint address. Ray's disc ussion of Beuys's recurring use of fat and feit can be considered in the context of the very spec ifi c mat erials and objects that Salcedo chooses for her works. In Beuys's 1963 piece Stuhl mit Fett (Chair with Fat) (Fig. 6), for instance, an enormous wedge of tat sits upon the seat of a basic woo den chair. The form of the chair suggests the absent human figure; the fat, placed whe re the bod y w ould normally rest , evokes a disembodied but physical presence. As Ray de scribes it, "[T he) seat ed human figu re which the chair's form so strongly evokes is absent, but reappears stubbo rnly, in a kind of ghastly afterimage, in and through the wedge of fat Beuys has subst it ut ed fo r it ." 32 Although Beuys equated fat with the lifesaving, warming properties he learned from t he Tartars, Ray associates it with the oven fires at Auschwitz, specifically in its "form to form lessness" qualit y as it relat es to the body. While wax would serve the same sculptural f unctio n, Ray po int s out th at Beuys instead chose a material with corporeal ties, calling to mind the body's vuln erab ility t o fi re and the victims of the Holocaust. 33 Beuys's use of feit can be interpreted as another World War II reference. While the practice may have root s in his claim that the Tartans insulated his chilled body by wrapping it in feit, the mater ial was know n in wartim e Germany for other disturbing reasons. Ray explains that after 1942, the hair of co nce nt rat ion camp vict ims was cut , gathered on site , and sent to German-owned factor ies tobe made into feit, whi ch was then used to make products during the war,suchas Slippers for U- boat crews and railroad workers ' stockings. In short, as Ray puts it, "WhateverBeuys's perso nal experience of thi s pressed material may have been and whatever its sculptural propert ies may be, f eit has a place in t he history of the Holocaust that cannot be erased or avoided."34 Beuys incorporated feit into many of his works , from his 1970 multiple Feit Suit (Fig. 7); to Infi ltrat ion Homoge n fo r Grand Piano, th e Greatest Contemporary Composer is the Thalidomide Child (1966) , in wh ic h a grand piano is completely enclosed in a feit cover sewn to fit eerilyand perfect ly; t o his l lik e Am erica and America likes Me action at the Rene Block gallery in New York in 1974 (Fig. 8), in whi ch he shroud ed himself in an enormous feit blanket and lived three days w it h a coyote. Like fat, feit is a material one readily associates with Beuys's practice, and when cons idered fro m th e perspect ive that Ray outlines, the significance of the material seemsimpossib le t o avo id. And yet beyond t he references to the war and the Holocaust in particular, it more ge nera lly sugg ests co nditi ons of muted silence , absence, empty space, or vacant place-ideas t hat also fig ure pro minently in Salcedo's practice . Ray esta blishes t hat Beuys did not publicly state his intention to address the war and its atrocities, nor did he dec lare a delib erate strategy to encode his materials, objects, and actions w it h refere nces to t hat t ragedy. "Evoking and avowing the Holocaust through various strategies, Beuys' pieces and acti ons can also be read as objects and gestures of mourning," Ray writes. And yet "t he st rongest works fun ction through formal resemblance, material affinity and allegory, rather t han direct represe ntati on and confrontation. " 35 Ray goes on to suggest that the gravity of t he hist or ica l co ntext t o whi ch Beuys alludes demands that his "project of mourning" occur through indirect rath er th an lit eral signifiers. In 1949, Theodor Adorno famously stated: "To write poet ry afte r Auschwit z is barbari c." 36 Ray adds to this pronouncement by arguing: [The) art of a Germ an of Beuys' generation must refuse both the beautiful and the direct or "positiv e" mod es of t raditional representation. lt must, like Beuys' art at its st rengest , produ ce its eff ect according to diff erent rules - those of the sublime. Only an art in th at regist er, an art whi ch evokes and avows, which strikes, hits and hollows, can hope t o honor th e major tr auma of the historical referent. 37 The widesp read violence and brutal ity that has fractured Colombian soc iety in recent history, especia lly du ring the last 30 years, raises issues related to those addressed by Adorno'sstatement abo ut artis ti c pract ice in t he face of such horrific violence . Salcedo draws from Beuys'sidea of

39

Fig . 7 . o Woo l Jo se ph Beuy s Feit S wt , 1 97 · , ' 7 x 100 c n 17 fe it with ink st a mp , Mu seTh e (69 '1/" x 39 '/, in .). Harvard Art um s/ Bu sc h - Reising er Mu seu;~ •11 ecWil ly a nd C h arlott e Re b ~r isinge r tion, Patr o ns of th e Bu sch Re M useum Fund , 19 95 .23 1.A - B-

social sculpture and his expanded concept of art to engage in her own "project of mourning ," one that similarly addresses these atrocities through indirect references. Like Beuys, Salcedo chooses the weight of materials as the means of approaching a conte xt pervaded by trauma, incorporating particular materials or objects to signify distinct settings , individuals, and experiences. Specifically, Beuys picks ordinary domestic objects that are familiar and aesthetically defined by words not of beauty but of purpose, including feit, flashlights , sleds , brooms, clothing, chairs, and furniture. These material choices resonate in Salcedo's approach. She, too, chooses everyday objects to convey what cannot be expressed in words or through figu rative renderings in oil or marble. She says: "I work with materials that are already charged with significance, with a meaning they have acquired in the practice of everyday life. Used materials are profoundly human; they all bespeak the presence of a human being." 38 In some of her early works, Salcedo incorporated the belongings of specific disappeared victims of the Colombian war, given to her by their families; but in most of her sculptures, the objects and furniture are signifiers without a known history or status as relic. 39 Her materials are weighted with references to the social and political, but they are indirect references. Beyond the materiality and specificity of objects chosen, Beuys 's engagement with his audience and interest in their physical involvement with his work is evident (by different means) in Salcedo's sculptures and installations as weil. Unlike Beuys, she does not actively encourage viewers to create and participate in her pieces with words and actions, but she does often require the viewer to draw physically close - to examine carefully the grain of the table to recogni ze the human hairs woven into the wood; to walk between a sea of coffin-like tables, one turned upside down upon the other in order to measure the vast space they fill and absorb the silence

40

Fig. 8 Jo se 1 A P' Beuy s / ,rnerica/ik es M, ik e Am e ri ca a nd Block Ga//ery 197 4. Ac tion at Rene 1974_ Mu se' ew Yo rk , May 23 - 25 Foundation ~rn Sc hl oss Moyl a nd Bedburg- Ha~ oseph Beuy s Ar c hiv e Photograph b, G;rrn any , JBA - F 955 0 9'. Y arolm e Tisda//.

i,

of these hu lking forms, t o fee l the humid presence created by the soil and note the tender green grass shooti ng up fro m wi thin the wood ; to walk along the expanding then diminishing width of a crevice that split t he mo numental expanse of the Tate Modern 's Turbine Hall; to approach and step back in an attempt to read, quant ify, and fully perceive the 1,550 strewn and stacked wooden chairs impossib ly balanced above an Istanbul sidewalk . The viewer's engage ment with Salc edo 's works is more than visual and contemplative; her pieces in turn reference t he body. The furn iture is common, used, accustomed to holding8 person 's we ight, filling one's home. As one sees and walks beside, between, and aroundthese works , the viewer recog nizes th e kitc hen table or chair so familiar from the routines of dailylife, thus prompting an act ive, imm ediate reception of the work. Salcedo's sculptures and installations are composed of objects and mate rials that are by no means neutral; they claim the viewer's engageme nt through t he sheer familia rity of the domestic furniture , fabric, and cement. She then painstakingly alters t hese known mat erials so that her works are at once familiar and strange, upending categories and accepted boundar ies of materials and objects, and forcing the viewer to think about and contend with these challenge s in a publ ic space. Not unlike Beuys's pro posal, but with a diffe rent context and address, Salcedo positions the viewer as an integra l element in the realization of her work . Her pieces, constructedfrom recognizable obj ects and mat erials, create a space and place for acknowledging the absence and devastating lasses wroug ht by violence in Colombia. As she says: This work is an attemp t t o form a certain community , an ephemeral community , the community of t he desap areci do s, with whose families I work. They gave me objects that had belonged to the desap are cido s of the violence in Colombia, and then I tried to recreate these objects, w hic h came from the individual space, the private grief of the families , into a work with ma ny niches in orde r to convert an individual phenom enon into a socia l phenomeno n. The grief that is limited to the family circle becomes

a social phenomenon .40

41

To this point, in Atrabiliarios, Salcedo renders a palpable material presence in which th e vi ctim s' specificity and absence depends on their worn shoes and the traces these harbor, encased in wall niches , shrouded behind animal skin (Fig. 9). By conceiving her work and placing it outside her studio , in a museum, gallery , or other publi c setting, Salcedo draws the audience into an interaction that engages both mind and body. In th e space her sculpture or installation comes to inhabit, she creates a physical place for view ers' con nection with the deaths, the pain , and the harrowing circumstances that so many have endured du ring war. Salcedo states, "My interest in the space of sculpture was in the way it can repre sent a crossroad, a meeting point. " 41 This is the space where the viewer confronts and contempl at es the ideas weighted in the materiality of Salcedo's sculptures. This is where one can mourn . Central to Salcedo's practice is the incorporation of everyday objects , a strategy that takes up but at the same time departs from the Duchampian idea of the readymade. The influenc e of Marcel Duchamp (1887 - 1968) played a decisive role in many of the issues and ideas that have been circulating among European and American artists from the mid-2oth century to the present . As Robert Smithson stated in a 1972 interview: "The prewar period was dominated by Mati sse and Picasso and the post- World War II period was dominated by Duchamp .. . . There has been a kind of Duchampitis recently."•2 Artists such as John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, Fluxus artists Allan Kaprow and George Maciunas, and European conceptual artists Yves Klein and Piero Manzoni, among others, embraced elements of Duchamp's approach. Nam ely, one or more of three paradigms of art making attributed to Duchamp figured in the proj ects of

42

511oes, 4 Fig. 9 . ead, 92 - 2 00 · rgi c al thr _ Atr a bi liar1o s , 1 9 ·b and su fran riab l e . san Art , a nirn al r, e r. dirn e n s1on s va of Mod ern ur· c i sco Mu se urnrnrnitte e Fund ~;eh Access 1o n s Co Emi l and 1 G·tt o f ca rl a d Raou c h ase, , . t r i c ia an . and Si l ve r s t e 1n. _Pa M cKeon , u sa and Kenn edy , Ela1ne a 5c 11rever . ht. John M i ll e r, c 11a r d Ro bin Wri9 Gord o n Freund , an 2004. 232. 1- 50 ·

,....._,, ~- =====~ ~ ~ - - Fig. 10 Marcel Ducham F P, ountain, 19 17/ 19 63 _ Cerami c I 62 .6 c,n' f1~z: , an~ paint , 38.1 x 48.9 x Francisco M 19 ¼ x 2 4 % in.). Sa n Purc hase t/1,i~e urn o_f M o d e m Art, _ g h a 9 1ft o f Phylli s c. Watti s, 98 _ 291

t hese art ist s: th e id ea of de conte xtualization and the readymade, the concept of the indexor visual mark as a trace in a pi cture , and the central role of language in the expression ,43 However. it was Duc ham p's readym ade - the utilitarian and manufactured object not charged with par~ t icu lar aesth et ic qu aliti es, yet placed and titled such that it is presented as art-in tandem with his emp hasis on t he arti st's idea over aesthetic expression that sparked fundamental changes in the strateg ies, means, and lan guage of art from the mid - century through today (Fig. 10). Hans Richter, a fo rmer Dadaist, declared upon Duchamp 's death in 1968 that it is "a fantasti c phenome non, and it is part of the myth surrounding Duchamp, that his intellectual tour de force, his Ready ma des, thes e philo soph_ical , esoteric, cri~ical, social statements, weigh infinitely more for t he pr esent generation than h1s remarkable un,que works of art." 44 In an essay on the subj ect , curator Lynne Cooke celebrates the readymade as a major influence in the 1960s, noting it s im po rta nce fo r assemblag e as well as, to a lesser extent, pop and new realism. 4 5 Duchamp's influence grew in t he 197 0s and '80s, Cooke goes on to say, with artists such as Bruce Nauman citing his influ ence in th e way that objects represent ideas . Daniel Buren, Lawrence Weiner, and ot her 1970s artists also reasserted Duchamp's proposal that an ordinary object is defined as art whe n it is inserted in an art environment , when it is hung on a gallery wall or mounted on a pedes ta J. ◄6 lt bears m entioning that the claims of Duchamp and the depth and scope of his influ ence are issues of m uch debate among scholars in the art historical community. Some consider most of his recog nized ideas as unint ended and regard him as a vacuous thinker, whose works and t he proposa ls g lea ned from his words have assumed an unwarranted authority.◄1 Regardless of the profundi t y or vac uity of his pronouncements or his intellect , Duchamp set the conditions for art ist ic possib ilit ies hith erto unknown. And it is within those expanded parameters that artists such as Sa lce do and coun t less other s before her began to use found objects in their work. Beuys was a cr it ic of Duchamp , but he also acknowledged the role that the artist's theories and obj ects played in his practice. In 1964 , Beuys performed an action he called The Silence of Marce l Duchamp is Overrated. Characteristic of Beuys, his chosen materials assumed particular signif ica nce. The use of feit, fat , ringing chimes , a brown cross, brown bandages, a walking stick and choco late was said to sugge st principles of nature and was interpreted as a reference t~ 48 Duchamp's ind iffere nce toward his career. Beuys created a later work referencing Duchamp's f irst read ym ade, ßicycle Wheel (Fig. 11). Beuys's piece , ls it about a bicycle?, was produced in

43

Fig. 11 . Whee/, 1951 origi nal). Marce l Duchamp, B,cycle 191 3 . ted wood (third ve rsion, after lo S! Meta! whe el mounted on pa1n(51 x 25 x stoo l, 129.5 x 63 .5 x 41 ·9 c m Art NeW 16 ½ in.). Mu seu m of Modern c~ 11 ecYork, Sidney and Harriet Ja n1s tion, 595.1967.a - b.

stages, and makes use of a bicycle and 15 blackboards , some covered with white or colored chalk drawing s and later paint and the tread impressions from bike tires . Beuys's spoken comments on Duchamp pointedly criticize the artist for his lack of social engagement , which he suggests would have been the preferable direction for his project . "Duchamp was a slacker who completed beautiful and interesting experiments as shocks to the bourgeoisie, and those were done brilliantly in the aesthetic typology of the time, but for all that , he did not develop a category of thought for it," Beuys said. 49 Years later, Beuys admitted that his statements about Duchamp were misguided, and there is some question as to his understanding of the French artist's ideas. Nonetheless , his preoccupation with the older artist suggests the importance that Duchamp's approach plays in Beuys's project, and is important to an examination of both artists' influence in Salcedo's work .50 Both Duchamp and Beuys conceived of an art in which the idea was of singular importance; the object was not a unique , rarified expression for which the aesthetic qualities superseded all; and the everyday object and common materials predominated. However , the artist's role in "activating" the work and engaging the audience are essential aspects in both Beuys's and Salc edo' s practices, as opposed to the silence and passive role Beuys claimed Duchamp chose. The underpinnings of Duchamp in Salcedo's work surface in her choice of everyday objects and materials as fundamental components of her practice, although her strategies are not directly beholden to Duchamp's tactics. Salcedo deliberately chooses readymades as a link to the particular victims and violent event each of her pieces address. Unlike Duchamp's urinal or bicycle wheel, which have no specific origin, the everyday object she employs in her sculptures and installations is determinedly not a banal, anonymous, mass - produced object just out of the factory; it is, or is meant to represent, a worn, personal possession from the victimized home. Salcedo carefully chooses the object and alters it in vividly legible ways that evidence her hand

44

Fig.12 Unland • T 1997 · he Orph a n ·5 . 24S; Wood , cloth h Tun,c (d et ail ), • air, and g lu e 80 9 8 cm ( Caixa" C 31 ½ x 96 1/ . , x Bare ont empor ar , x 38 '1• in .). "l a elona, ACF069 / Art Co ll ec t, o n,

and th e exact ing process she pursues as a way of getti ng back at violence 's effects within the co nt ext of war. Robert Srnith son's characte rizatio n of Ducharnp's perspect ive on the readymade illumin ates the di ff erence between the French arti st's approach and Salcedo's practice: Ducharnp offe rs a sanctif icat ion for alienated objects, so you get a generation of manufactured go od s. lt is a cornplete denial of t he wo rk process and it is very mechanical too .. . . Ducharnp is trying to transce nd product ion it self in the readymadeswhen he takes an obj ect out of the rnanufacturing process and t hen isolates it. He hasa certain 51

contemp t for th e wo rk process. Althoug h Salcedo's t reatrnent of objects prod uces a sense of disjunct ion and strangeness that coold be cornpa,ed to that of the Q,charn plan ,eadyrnade, the po< 181/ein.). Tate, London , T07836.

Over the course of her career, Salcedo has created sculpture by consistently dr awin g upo n the six visual strategies discussed in detail below. She has relied heavily on th ese aesth eti c m eans, th rather than figural images, to express the condition and consequences of politic al violen ce , bo at home and throughout the world. This chapter focuses on a wide range of Salcedo 's work s, in order to uncover how she uses materials to evoke the absent victims of political vi olence; how she conveys the horror, the state of uncertainty , and the weight of memory brought by civil w ar;

steel. Fig. 4 ood, cerne nt . 4 1 x Un tit led. 1995. W z36.2 x 10 . of h and leat h er, . ) Museum c 1o t , x 19 ,n. • man 48.2 cm (93 x 41 York. The Nor 1ncModern Art. NeW n fo undauon, and Rosita w ,nsto 4 1996. Fund and pur chase. .

and how she condemns the political conditions behind the violence.

1. Space to Place

.

In Salcedo's works, there is a sense of displacement conveyed by putting used dome sti c furnitur e in a public site or gallery-her visual strategy of space to place. She explains the interd ependen ce of the two as follows: "I think of space in terms of place, a place to eat or a place to writ e, a pl ace to develop life . So there is no way of isolating living experience from spatial experien ce: it 's exactly the same thing . Certain types of contemporary work underscore this aspect of sculptur e as a topography of life." 16She evokes this relationship in two ways: first, the dome stic furnitur e ca lls to mind the protected space of the home (and its subsequent violation) ; second, the phy sica l space her sculptures occupy challenges viewers to reflect on their spatial setting. (l'm ref erring here to the installation of an individual sculpture or a group of sculptures in a gallery or publi c viewing space, not the public projects Salcedo has created on a monumental scal e, such as tho se for the Istanbul Biennial or Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern. These were created on a vast scale, and as a result have their own particular relationship with space .17) Philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote of "felicitous space" as the kind of "space that may be grasped, that may be defended against adverse forces , the space we love ," a " protective space" such as the site of one's intimate life , the private quarters where family meal s and rest take place. 18The charged significance of space and place in Salcedo's work should be view ed through this lens, but also through literary critic Jean Franco's seminal analysi s of the devastating violation of these spaces in Latin America in the 1960s and after. 19Franco's essay discus ses the traditional role of the home as a place of protected refuge, one that in Latin Ameri ca frequ ently presented a barrier to the outside world. Often surrounded by a wall, houses were built to fa ce an inner courtyard and had shutters or iron bars on the windows; the interior space was hidden and difficult to enter . Franco equates the physi cal and psychological shelter afforded by the home, convent, or church as a "territory of immunity" that gave the people who lived and worshipped there prote ction for decades, throughout periods when the state's power fluctuated. (The church and convent were traditionally protected sanctuaries, as an embassy is today, and could not be entered by those seeking to violate that asylum. Once that barrier was transgressed, a real sense of political and social order was violated.) In the mid-20th century, Franco explains , the "counter-in surgen cy movement ... destroyed both the notion of sacred space and the immunity which , in theory if not in practice, belonged to nuns, priests, women and children." 20 The effects of this breakdown wer e experienced acutely in Colombia during the 1980s through 2000s, when the war and continuou s political violence ravaged families and daily life. Salcedo addresses the violation of home s - th e spaces that should be, as Bachelard argues, "the environment where protective beings live" - and the ongoing assault on people's existence by taking everyday objects from that intimate world and placing them in the public sphere, at once ripping them from their original context and providing a site for collective response to the material statement she creates .21 "I don't believe that space can be neutral," Salcedo has said. "The history of wars, and perhap s even history in general, is but an endless struggle to conquer space . Space is not simply a setting , it is what makes life possible ." 22Salcedo's project is in part concerned with the way war makes space uninhabitable for the survivors and countless refugees in Colombia and around the world : Once yo~ travel to a war zone, you realize that life is impossible in these places. You cannot find any place there to call your own .. . . To cite Levinas again, he changes the Cartesian dictum, "I think therefore I exist" to "I inhabit therefore I exist." To live

Fig . 5

Unti tl ed 19 90 · Wooden tab le, stee l tab 1e ' d ' an co nc r t B\" 45.5 crn (2 e e, 72.5 x 55 x 2 21 lion of th x ¾ X 18 in .). Co llece art 1s1.

som ew here is w hat makes life possible, although in many places in Colombia and t hro ughout t he world it is unattainable. You are in a negative space. 2 3

Salcedo addresses t his charged, non-neutral quality of space, and the resulting absence of place in works suc h as her untitl ed furniture series from the 1990s (Fig. 4). An early example from tha; series is a piece in whi ch two simpl e wooden bedside tables appear to be spliced and fused toget her as one (Fig. 5). Thi s dom esti c furnishing , which in countless homes would hold everyday objects like books, paper, a cup for water, or reading glasses, has been transformed by Salcedo into a jar ringly awkwa rd hybr id of wooden forms melded with a steel frame and partially covered in concrete. The object bears the consequences of the brutal efforts it took to join wood, metal, and co ncret e into a table- like structure , resulting in aesthetic characteristics that could be read as violence wit nessed f irsthand in a home . The table's familiar symmetry and stability is broken: a meta / tab le with thr ee legs supports the top and adheres to two of the three wooden fegs; the broke n stum p of what would have been the fourth leg, made of steel, hangs severed beneath the tab le. A woo den leg smeared with cement juts oddly and without purpose along one slde seemi ngly a remn ant of another damaged table, reconfigured into this piece. ' The work speaks to th e diff iculties of habitation du ring war, ot the uncertainty and precariousness ot that life when neither a place nor space exists for human beings. Under these conditions , home and t he protec ti on it affords are shattered , and an aggregate of what once was and what replaces it mu st suffi ce. Salcedo recalls how the exiled Jewish poet Paul Celan "talks of those w ho do not even hav e th e protect ion of 'the traditional roof of sky' .... The point l am interested in is the imposs ibility ot inhabiting a space ." 2• The sculpture conveys the separationfrom place, set in a space (a gallery) where it appears to tentatively reside. The spliced tables,likethe victlms ot politica l violenc e, are displa ced and forever changed. Throughout th e 1990s, du ring some of the most brutal years of political violencein Colombla, Salcedo produce d monument al works made of wooden furniture filled and seeminglysuffocated wit h co ncrete, evoking the uninhabitable nature of space under the circumstances of war. These are t he pieces for wh ich she drew international attention and acclaim. One example is an untitled ceme nt -filled wardrob e piece from 1992 of such an imposing scale, a quality accentuated by t he fact t hat it lies toppl ed on its side, that it appears as if it fell from the weight of cement or trom br uta l torce (Fig. 6). The wardrobe imparts an unsettling presence, which is furthered by the ceme nt t hat fill s t he space where personal belongings should be stored . Inside the cold, lifeless co ncrete a woo den chair is suspended , its outline barely visible. Salcedo fused another chair, para lyzed in a cement blo ck with steel rods splicing through the seat, beneath the upended legs at one end of t he wardrobe. Metal rods bisect the dense material and smaller metal pieces pierce the wood , co nnect ing section s of the furniture like stitches of steel holding the wooden frame toget her beneat h th e immen se weight and strain of the cement . The surface of Salcedo's sculpt ure sugges t s her pro cess and the forceful manipulation of materials; wire and steel embedded in wood and ceme nt recall suture s on skin, physically intrusive and deliberate. This sculptur e, simil ar to many of her other untitled furniture pieces from the 1990s, conveys a dist urb ing ly disto rte d portr ayal of domestic furniture : a monster, its body soldered together. encase d in co ncret e, tro zen and useless, sprawled on its side in a public space. This jumbled co llect ion of furni t ure t hat belongs in a hause resonates deeply precisely because it is extracted from its expec t ed environment , never to return there again. Moreover, the piece seems to suffer from t he im me nse weight and pressure of the concrete forced within and upon it, just as history is burdened by t he weight of the unthinkable yet true . lt bears marks suggestive of an uninhabitable space where domesti c f urnitu re cannot function. By inserting this piece in a public site, Salcedo conj ures up the place where the se pieces belang and confirms their forced displacement from their domes ti c context and purp ose, like victims fleeing violence. The sculpture leaves the viewer to wonder, what exactly is buried within this wardrobe? Salcedo's La casa Viuda (The Widowed House) series from 1992 - 95 is another example that po intedly evokes th e dysfun ct ional spaces and nature of existence for those living in war. Wooden doors fi g ure promin ently in this series; some are placed against walls, others stand

59

upright, and all lead nowhere. Floorboards mark the space on the ground around some of the pieces, as if outlining the home as it had been, contained within walls that once protected the interior .25 The non-functional nature of the works in this series and their expression of the attacked and abandoned domestic space are underscored by the pieces of chair, bed frame, or bureau that bisect the futile wooden doors. These sculptures contort space and place in ways subtly but profoundly disturbing. Salcedo has said that "the specific location of the works is an essential element because it speaks to the condition of life in zones of extreme violence, where to inhabit, tobe or to exist in your own private space, is impossible . We know that victims must leave their homes to face execution and in other cases are forced to move away." 26 Hence, as the title "The Widowed House" suggests, these sculptures refer to the private dwelling space from which the husband was taken, where the wife can no langer live, and where the familiar has been viciously and perversely reconfigured. La Casa Viuda 1(Fig. 7) vividly conveys the tracks of violence . An oddly tall and narrow wooden door rests against the wall, its frame rough-hewn with the ends of severed "limbs" marking the left side, crude stumps jarring the doorframe . From the bottom third of the door juts the seat and two legs of a chair, suggesting that the chair's remainder continues behind the door , colliding with the wall behind. Salcedo registers the effects of violence in this sculpture through the surface and condition of the chair:

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. steel , d oncrete. • Untitl ed, 199 2. woo 'c 3 " 186- 7 . · 114 11: ) Art ins \ass, an d ! abric, 9 ror " "2 0 ,n. · 50 .8 cm (45 " 73 " . o! socielY 11 t ut e of Ch icago, G1 994.542Contemporary Art , 1

F,g. 6

Fig_7a and 7b (detail, foll ow ing page) La Casa Viuda / , 1992 - 94. Wood and fabri c, 257.8 x 59.7 x 38.7 cm (101 ½ x 23½ x 15 ¼ in .). Wor ces t e r Art Mu se um, M assac hu se tt s, Gift or th e Friend s o f Co nt empo rary A rt, 1994.24 1.

its legs are reversed, pointing toward the viewer on curving, narrow "toes" clearly meant to face under the seat; and a swath of white, lacy fabric is seared to its surface, roughly stitched to thin cotton in front and pinned between the chair and door, hanging in loose but secured folds. There is a palpable sense that violence ravaged this hause and that one victim, whose lace garment is fused onto the chair that now bisects the door, suffered this attack. Here Salcedo conjures up a material statement of such vividness that one dare not imagine what lay behind the door. Salcedo compares the precariousness of space and place under these circumstances to Robert Smithson's idea of the non-site: "La Casa Viuda utilizes an idea of the uncertainty, what Smithson has called no space (non-site), that is a place of passage, where it is impossible to live ." 27 In Non-Site: Line of Wreckage (Fig. 8), Smithson installed the literal materials of a natural landscape, such as rocks and sand, within proscribed containers, out of context , in a gallery. Filling space but without conveying a specific place, they embody a non-site. Similarly, Salcedo extracts domestic furniture associated with the shelter of harne and disturbingly fuses it with fragments of various personal belongings to imply the violation of that once-protected space. In La Casa Viuda IV (Fig. 9), a narrow, pale wooden door with tour window trames missing glass appears pinned against a bare wall by pieces of dark, wooden bed frames. The pieces of bed frame menacingly pierce the door on either side, seeming to bisect it and continue into the wall behind. The space within the door's bottom-most window frame is covered by layers of a

....

Fig. 8 Robecka ert Sm ,t · h so n , Non-S it e: Un e o f Wr 1968 ge (Bayo nn e , New Jersey), eo . Pa ,nt e d a lum i num broken ncre t e, fr a m e d m a p a ;,d thr ee Ph oto pa ne 1s, cage: 149 '.9 x 177.8 x 31 . 8 cm (59 x 7 0 x 1 2 ½ in )· panels· J , ' . 9 ' 5 X 124 5 kee A · cm (3 ¼ x 49 in.). M ilwau End rt Mu seum , Purchase, Nationa l F dowment for the Arts M at c hing un s, Ml 969.65.

thin cotto n blouse; th e pleated bodi ce, accented with lace and button holes, spills from the frame onto t he wood below, where segments of bone are stitched to the surface by countless threads. Two long, narrow slivers of bone inserted into the wood mimic the horizontal line of the window frame , t heir blond hue mat ching the color of the wood . The fragments that Salcedo joins together in th is scu lpt ure do not fit: bones, cloth , and wood collide through sheer force, an assemblag e that presents a stat eme nt of th e precarious nature of that place, the impossibility of living in the space t hat was once home. lm portant for Salcedo is the installation of her sculptures in a space that forces close examlnatio n and challenges t he viewer's ability to gain a spatial perspective on the works. In her word , When we see a piece of furniture we know we can use it, sit on it. By converting them into dysf unct ional obj ects I wanted to find a way of placing all of a work's meaning on its surface, a direct opaque surface. l have tried to avoid perspective, the comfortable dista ncing of the wor ld. 1wanted to bring everything to the surface, a surface that co nfro nts t he spectat or di rectly . .. up against your being, your body. There is no way 28 you can observe: rat her it forms part of your immediate environment.

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Fig. 9a and 9b (detail) La Casa Viuda IV, 1994. wood , fabri c, and bones, 259 .9 x 47 x 33 cm (102'/,, • 18 ½ x 13 in.). Museum of Modern Art, New York , Committee on Painting and Scu lptur e Fund s Latin Amer ican and Caribbean Fund ', and g ift of Patricia Phe lps de Cisneros, 85.2010.

C rnegie Fig. 10 e 52 nd a of In sta ll ation for th g ie Mu seurn . 1 ca rn e l nt e rnat, ona ' 995. Art, Pittsburgh . 1

Creating installations that challenge viewers is another aspect of Salcedo's visual strategy of space to place as it relates to giving material expression to war 's effects on victims . She explains : 1think

that the space of an installation is configured by a struggle, a resistance toward this society where there is no space for this suffering tobe manifested and recogni zed. In the space of the installation one encounters another rhythm. 1think that these pieces are actually constructing and returning that space. 29

In her larger -scale works that incorporate several pieces , Salcedo sees the space of sculpture as a place where ideas can come together , a point of intersection where the audien ce can phy sically move through and think about issues . She has said: "I think the space of an installation can become a very beautiful form of political resistance ... . In the installation the audience is allowed to walk and live in a very concrete space. lt is a space where you are allowed to think and reflect on reality." 30 Standing before and moving among her furniture pieces, such as the La Casa Viuda series , the viewer confronts the pieces from no prescribed vantage point. The spacing between objects is either strangely vast or so deliberately crowded that one's perspective is distorted or compromised . This awkward distance and relationship between audience and object leaves the viewer trying to acclimat e to the physical surroundings and the ways in which space is consumed by Salcedo 's imposing pieces. In the installation she created for the 52nd Carnegie International , at the Carnegie Mu seum of Art in Pittsburgh , Salcedo crowded more than 20 disturbing furniture pieces into a space that constrained the viewer 's ability to view or engage the works as separate sculptures (Fig. 10). Mo st of the pieces were clustered near the walls at one end of the museum 's large gallery , cramping the space with a large, cement-filled wardrobe bisected by a bed frame; a concret e-filled bureau

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Fig. l l a and llb La Casa Viu da II (det a il s), 1993 - 94 .

W oo d, f a bri c, m e t a l , a nd b o nes, 259 .7 x 79.7 x 60 .3 cm (10 21/, x 3 1 % x 23 3/ , in.) . Art Gall e ry o f Ont a r io , Toront o, Gift fr om th e Vo lunt ee r Co m mitl ee Fund, 1997, 96 / 29 4 .

melded to two chairs encased in cement; and various other china cabinets, chairs, and chests fi\led with cement. Nearby, another collection of similarly disturbing clusters of furniture of various scale lined part of the same wall; the back of one ehest abutted a wardrobe that was turned on its side and fi\led with cement and chairs, while a towering antique wardrobe stood apart - a lone figure amid the groupings of strangely fused, dysfunctional, seemingly wounded furniture sculptures. At first glance, the installation resembled an attic, with unused chests and bureaus stored away and positioned to use minimal space. On approach, the viewer saw the cement fusing pieces together, chairs atop or inside of chests, cabinets frozen solid with cement behind their front windows, and fabric and objects caught in the concrete. One could not discern each piece individually because they were so closely placed. Those that were installed apart from the clus ter faced the wa\l, as did two chairs set alone at the opposite end of the gallery, trapped within blocks of cement. In order to walk behind or between the pieces (if one could even fit through the narrow cavity between the chests or chairs). one's body nearly touched the wood and the cold concrete . The viewer could not avoid acknowledging these familiar but profoundly strange home furnishings.

Fig. 12a and 12b Atr bF · I Sh a ian os (detail s), 1992 - 20 0 3 . fib oe s, drywall, paint, wood , a nim al var~~;,~d surgical thread, dimensions Sa n Franc isco Mu se um o f M Odern .Art A . te F • ccess ,on s Co mmi tnd an: ~ pur c hase: Gift of Carla Emil ic h S1lv e rs te in, Pa tr ic ia a nd Raou l Ken d . a d ne y, Ela,ne M c Keon Lisa n John Mill er, Chara Sc hr eye; and Gord o n F d 20 04 _ _reun • a nd Robin Wr ight, 232

2. The Uncanny and Anthropomorphism

The sense of the uncanny (also connected to the concept of anthropomorphism) figures promlnently in Salcedo's project. Developed over an exte~ded period of_time, and drawing on lengthy interviews with victims' loved ones or based o~ testImo~y of a survIvor, 31her sculptures incorporate objects , trom furniture to personal belongings, that in each case relate to a particular victlm. Whet her the item was once that person's possession or is merely suggestive of the individual these obje cts bear the traces of victims. In this way, Salcedo's work becomes an act of mournln~ tor both the absent body and the surviving loved one. As she has said: The choice of objects is different in each piece. The only similarity is that these objects are used and transformed by each victim du ring the course of daily life. The surface of each object bears the trace of specific aspects of that person's life. In some cases 1 received the possessions of the victims .. . . In other cases I intuitively chose the object,a2 Salcedo sees this effo rt as a means of connecting to the victims and the violence they endured. As she described her approach to Charles Merewether: I try to be a witness of the witness. l look for an intimate proximity with the victims of violence that allows me to stand in for them. One must feel close to another in order to stand in for him or her and create an artwork out of another's experience. As a result, the work is made using his or her testimony as its foundation. lt is not my rational intent but rather the experience of the victim that tells us about trauma, pain, loss. As a scu lptor , 1am aware of every detail that informs the life of the victim: the corporeality, the feelings, the vulnerability, the failings , the space, his or her life's trajectory and lang uage. 1don't tormulate the experience of the victim, rather, I assemble it so that it remains forever a presence in the present moment. ... Sculpture forme is the giving of a material gift to that being who makes his presence feit in my work. 33

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As discussed above, du ring the late 1980s into the 1990s , many of her sculptures implied the victim's presence through the inclusion of material traces from these individual s. Literal belongings or fragments of objects once touched by the victims surface in her piece s. But the victim's body is, as scholar of trauma and memory studies Jill Ben nett has put it, a "fugitiv e not figural" presence in Salcedo's sculptures; the trace is indeterminate and does not impart the narrative of a specific victim. 34 However, it generates affect, leading the viewer to study c losely and try to understand the implications of, for instance , a scrap of worn shirt embedded in th e cement. lt positions the viewer as witness to the consequences of violence , eliciting questions and emotions - elements critical to Salcedo's practice. The domestic furniture, worn clothing, and fragments of bone , buttons, and zipper s that figure in Salcedo's pieces at once resonate for their familiarity and toster an unsettling sense of Strangeness that pervades each sculpture. Although rendered from different materials, Salcedo's pieces connect to Beatriz Gonzalez'spainted household furniture from earlier years. The trace s insti ll an anthropomorphic quality in both artists' work , and contribute to the manner in which Salcedo actively generates the uncanny. The vivid rendering of what Freud described as the unheimlich , the familiar made strange, has played a pivotal role throughout her project, beginning with her early works Atrabiliarios, the La Casa Viuda series, the untitled furniture from the 1990s, and th e Unland series. Salcedo perceives the unheimlich, the sense that the known is now unknown , as related to the living conditions created by civil violence ; and she manifests that disturbing sense by altering and distorting familiar furniture in her sculptures : Something that at a given moment was part of a familiar environment become s distorted and terrifies us when we are unable to recognize it . The incapacity to relate directly to that familiar object disconcerts us. This rupture and distortion interest me since they are similar to the effects produced by violence, which perverts and destroy s the idea of what you know. 35 By introducing anthropomorphic elements into her work s, Salcedo induces the sense that a familiar kitchen chair, bedroom ehest, or closet door has been strangely altered or scarred, no longer functional as a domestic object . In La Casa Viuda II (Fig. 11), as in La Casa Viuda IV (discussed above), pieces of bone imbedded in the wood are visible upon close scrutiny . lnserted within a crack that finely splits a small ehest, the pale bone fragment appears to glow within the deep brown hue of the wood . The buttons of a shirt are also visible along the seam of the crack, as if the rest of the garment is stuffed within it. The ehest abuts a door , and on its back side an opened zipper mirrors the adjacent seam of wood , its tines securing a swatch of red and black cloth submerged into the wood beneath layers of dark stain. These material traces evoke a human presence, but without the narrative and specificity of individual victims of the violence suffered in this "widowed house." As Jill Ben nett observes, Salcedo's inclusion of these objects and frag ments is a means of signifying not particular people, but the altered function of these bits and pieces within the context of war's disruptive consequences on life and home: The tragments of clothing encased in furnishings . .. no longer enliven those objects but haunt them in a way that does not recall their former use . ... 1 would argue, then , that the "widowed house" does not constitute a visual analogy in the sense that objects stand in for mourners but is rather an effect of the way things change when loss is experienced .... Salcedo's methods demonstrate an overriding concern with inhabitation - that is, with the ways in which those left behind learn to inhabit the world made strange and uninhabitable by death .36 That strangeness permeates these once familiar furnishings and belongings. Salcedo's Atrabiliarios series (Fig. 12) exemplifies the fine balance she strikes in imparting the anthropomorphic without signifying a specific individual. She presents worn shoes, personal possessions imbued with the victims' touch, but they are installed in such a way that they are

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Fig.13 Chri sti an Bollan ski, Untitled (Reser ve), 1989. Nin e photograph s wilh n in e e lec tri c larnp s a nd f a bri c, 28 1.9 x 162.6 x 17.8 c rn (111 x 64 x 7 in .). Rubell Farnily Co llec tion, Mi a rni, acq uir ed in 1989.

removed from direct viewing, as if entombed and shrouded. lnset into the wall , sm all ni ches of varied size and spacing enclose a shoe or pair of shoes, each barely visible beneath th e murky surface of a cow's bladder roughly sewn onto the wall with thick black sutures to cover the op ening. Placed at eye level, the line of niches - somewhat reminiscent of cemetery sit es for hum an remains following cremation - does not immediately make clear what lies within .37 Upon clo ser scrutiny, one recognizes that one or two shoes are encased behind the skin, some with soles fa cing the viewer , some presented as a perfect pair, and others askew and facing opposite dir ection s. The shoes Salcedo placed in her first works within the Atrabi/iarios series belonged to victim s; although this was not true in her later pieces, the impression they leave remains unchanged and deeply disconcerting .38 Most of the shoes are women's. Du ring her early concentrated research throughout Colombia with the families of the disappeared and deceased , Salcedo learn ed th at most of the female victims who were disappeared were held captive for extended period s befor e execution . In her talks with the victims' family and friends, she not only heard their storie s and shared their sorrow, but ultimately participated in the painful process of identifying the corpse s found in mass graves by the shoes worn by the victims. The presence of the shoes in this work unnervingly realizes, in more direct terms than in most of her work, the searing loss and absen ce that endures for the survivors. Because she presents the shoe as the entire leather pos session that enclosed someone's foot, not as a fragment like a shirt cuff or a swatch of bodice, it more clearly signifies the particular human being who once lived and wore these shoes. Through the se possessions, Salcedo suggests the memory of these victims and the loss endured by their loved ones; she uses vivid traces, but without depicting the faces that appear in work s by fellow arti st s, such as Oscar Muf\oz's A/iento, discussed earlier in this volume. Although the shoes of victims are presented in this work , Salcedo frames them not as personal narratives, but as objects eerily uncanny, operating on various levels but above all m arking the absence and mourning that continues . The accumulation of worn shoes figures memor ably in exhibitions at Holocaust museums. Contemporary artist Christian Boltanski, too , creat es work s that include piles of discarded clothing, juxtaposing them with found photographs to imply the enormity of the loss wrought by the genocide (Fig. 13) . Salcedo 's use of worn shoes , however , imparts a different charge. Her work pertains specifically to the violence fueled by the politi cs of Colombia's narcotics-related civil war and its domestic and global complications - a horrific situation that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and widespread destruction, yet is not acknowledged internationally through art and exhibitions as a history representative of trauma as is the Holocaust. 39 The reasons for this difference are various and outside the focus of this book. Nevertheless, the powerful circumstances of violence on such a scale that it claims count less victims who remain nameless and largely unacknowledged outside their families figures prominently in Salcedo's use of these shoes. Although she does not frame the shoes as person al narratives, each shoe or pair signifies a person lost, separately presented, defined , and fr amed as an individual, an address distinct from the piles of shoes that represent the unfathomable numbers of victims of the Holocaust . As Jill Bennett points out, "[P}ersonal effects are not incorporated into Salcedo's work as they are into the displays in Holocaust museums, where they rest intact as shocking reminder s of l1vestaken. Enclosed, occluded, embedded, or encased , they no longer function as mementos of the dead - or as_the kind of personal effects that animate family shrines." •o Not only are the shoes d1ff1cult to d1scern with clarity or even to approach in any manner, their presentation behind t~e th1ck, yellowed, and fibrous cow bladder blurs their appearance to the point that it 1sthe animal skin held in place by coarse, black stitches that commands the viewer 's attention . Salce_dovivi~ly evokes _the violence that claimed the owners of these shoes through the brutal suturing of p1ecesof skin chosen to conceal the cavities holding evidence of these victims ' fate s. The shoe~ are neith~.r relics nor fetishes, although Charles Merewether places them between the two, explaining that las} a rehc they stand in for the remains of the deceased· as a fetish they become a substitute object of both identification and disavowal." •1 Because ;he se shoes are among the personal effects ~f victims who disappeared, in one sense they signify specifi c, although nameless, females; the1r presence in this work grounds the viewer with evidence that

7?

Fig . 14 lnsta llar . SITE Sa~~anFv,ew01 the Unland se ries ' e, 1998.

these particular women suffered violence. However blurred their presentation, the shoeswitness the erasure of these women from the world they left behind. In another sense,each shoe is a distinct, material object separate from the person whose foot it once covered. With no information linki ng these shoes to particular bodies or individuals, and with the images of the pumps and oxfords di stor ted by the cloudy animal skin, the worn shoes operate ambiguously as traces of these particu/ar victims. However, the title Salcedo gave this work, Atrabiliarios, is an antiquated Spanish word that roughly translates to Black Rage, furthering the notion that the artist sought to materialize in this piece the enduring fact and memory of these women's absence.•21tsignifies the fury and wrenching sorrow behind the unspeakable horror that these women faced and that their families continue to relive. The shoes are the only traces that remain of these women, and wlth them Salcedo imparts the space between the abse~t body and the life lived pervadedby silence. Atrabiliarios reminds the viewer that the world 1smade strange by violence. lt transformsthe lives of those remaining , so that all that was known is now al_tered haunt~ngly: the bodymay be disappeared, but its absence palpably permeates the home, 1tssurroundmgs, everything.In her address on political violence, Salcedo deliberately fosters a sense of the uncanny and a disconcerting silence. She tocuses not on the victim's body but on the perspective of those who suffer

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with the absence, their lives deformed by this tragic void. As she explains : " My work spea ks of the continuation of life, a life disfigured , as Derrida would say. Memory must work between the figure of the one who has died and the life disfigured by the death ." 43 Masked behind the veil of anima l skin, itself an unnervingly vivid trace of life whose eeriness is enhanced by the surgi ca l thread that recalls sutures closing a wound, the shoes impart the strangeness born of the familiar oddly removed from life. These are personal belongings without a body, entombed in the void in which survivors live following such loss. In her Unland series (Fig. 14), which consists of the works The Orphan's Tunic , Irrev ers ibl e Witness , and Audible in the Mouth , anthropomorphism and the uncanny operate in a particularly pointed address on political violence , realizing a principal tenet of Salcedo's practice. These piece s give form to the space between the absent body of the victim and the scarred survivors . As the artist has stated: "I believe that the major possibilities of art are not in showing the spectacle of violence but instead in hiding it. . . . lt is the proximity , the latency of violence that interest me . But also the affective dimensions associated with the laten cy of terror ." •• She places the viewer in the position of "witness of the witness" through subt le but profoundly disturbing means . Thi s series includes three monstrously elongated tables , each created from the fusion of two lengthy , simple, rectangular wooden dining tables. Although the three pieces bear aesthetic similaritie s, each table is an independent sculpture . When installed together, each commands a space dis tant from the others. Of particular importance in these works are Salcedo's choice of materi als and the manner in which they reveal her hand and impart the deeply haunting , infinitely fragile balance that fills the space and the lives of survivors of this violence.

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. Fig. 15a and 15b (detail) Unland: T/1e Orphan·s Tunic, 1997. Wood clo th , hair,andg lue. ~,°x245 : 98 cm •(31½ x 96 ½ x 38 ¾ in._). la Ca,xa Co nt empora ry Art Co ll ec t1on, Barcelo na, ACF0692.

The title of Unland: The Orphan's Tunic (Fig. 15) references a line in the poem "Night Rode Hirn," by Paul Celan, whose writings that evoke the depths of post-Holocaust despair resonate with issues Salcedo explores in her work on political violence. His bare, deeply troubled verses work to get beyond Adorno's statement about post-Holocaust expression ("To write poetry after Auschwit z is barbaric"), just as Salcedo's sculptures give material voice to the enduring depth of pain expe rienced by those who lived through war's brutality. The Orphan's Tunic is based on Salcedo's interact ions with a six-year-old girl who witnessed the murder of her parents. Salcedo saw her daily, and each day the little girl was wearing the same dress. When asked about the horror she had seen, the child was unable to remember anything prior to her parents' death. However , Salcedo learned that the dress the little girl wore day after day was one her mother made for her.45 In her sculpture, Salcedo conjures a vivid sense of the child's dress and the trace of the absent body of the mother and of her surviving daughter by melding anthropomorphic elements into the tab le's wooden surface. This sculpture , more so than all others in Salcedo's oeuvre, incorporates a level of specificity to an individual victim , however nameless, that triggers affect upon the viewer's close scrutiny of the piece. When viewing the work from afar, it appears that two long tables have been forced together to create one unwieldy table, disproportionately extended beyond human scale. As one draws closer, it becomes apparent that the short end of the table bears a membrane of pale cloth marked by co untless holes where the fabric was sewn, thread by thread, into the wood. The needles punctured the hard surface, sealing the cloth flush and taut to the wood, like skin covering a body; the grain of the wood is visible through the fabric. Where the two tables join, the cloth frays and unravels but remains held against the wood by hundreds of thousands of dark human hairs catching the fabric. The hairs weave over and over into the countless, minute holes marking a swat h of wood, appearing across the top and spilling over the sides of the table like a dark, shiny, ephe meral textile embedded in the surface. The human presence that is physically

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b (detail) 95_98. Fig. 16a an d 16 . Witness, 19 nd Unland: Irreversible el crib, silk , \ " Wooden tab \es, ste ss.9 crn (4 B x 248.9 x Museurn hair, 111. ) san Franci sco hrough 98 x 35 ,n. . Purchase l an odern Art, sha Gelrn of M d Nata ·11ee the Jacques a n ssion s cornrn' Fund and the Acce Fund, 98.5 30 ·

registered by the cloth and powerfully enhanced by the hair not only generates a sense of th e uncanny in this strange table, but projects a literal suggestion of t he little girl 's dress. The hair , displaced from the body where it grew, presents the index of the victim's absence . Typical of Salcedo's work is the fastidious process with which she incorporates these traces as a kind of skin. Given the innumerable stitches that secure the hair and cloth to the wood, it would be impossible to remove these elements without flaying the table. When near the sculpture, the viewer recognizes that this process evidences the artist's hand and the human touch, an effort of compulsive, repeated actions to attach the cloth and hairs to create this "skin." Here you can see how the work relates to Celan's poem: Night rode him, he had come to his senses, the orphan's tu nie was his flag, no more going astray, it rode him straight lt is, as though oranges hung in the privet, as though the so-ridden had nothing on but his first birth-marked, secret-speckled skin. 46

In the vivid materials, and in the relentless process to adhere them and the table tog et_ h er, Salcedo harbors not the event that destroyed the parents , but the sense of the child wh o liv es on in mourning, her world forever changed .47The work is attune to an idea that Cathy Caruth has expressed in her work on trauma studies: namely, that the actual experience witnessed often cannot be directly comprehended by the viewer. Traumatic experience, she argues, "sugge st s a certain paradox: that the most direct seeing of a violent event may occur as an absolute in~b_ility to know it." 48 The sense of war's effects is latent in The Orphan's Tunic; the horror is not rev1s1ted pictorially, but the orphan girl wearing the dress sewn by her slain mother figures palpabiy upon this table, made uncanny through its strange and affective composition.

Fig 17a and . pages) 17b - c (detail s, foll oW'? s and other Inst all at ion of Thou- ~:e urn of co n2015- see unt it led cha ir wo rks: M O t ernporary Ar t , c 111ca~ ~n fh ou-/ess. p. 161 for full info rrnat10

3. The Materiality of Surface The materiality of surface, so evocatively conceived in the Unland series, is evident in all of Salcedo's work. Though she was trained initially as a painter, materials and the ways in which they are juxtaposed, interwoven, disassembled, or altered through processes that contort , wear , age , and sometimes weaken their inherent qualities have always figured in the surfaces of the artist's works. She focuses on the surface as a kind of skin, one that is at once scarred, enduring, and elastic as weil as sensual, seemingiy fragile, and bearing beneath its surface the damage that violence has inflicted. 49 Unland: Irreversible Witness (Fig. 16), like the others in the series, conjoins two lang, lean tables in an awkward fusion. At one end, a diminutive, warn iron crib lies on its side, its frame embedded into the tabletop. Lang, dark hairs - nearly imperceptible as human except where they are layered- delicateiy stitch the crib onto the table. A fine, ephemeral skein of cloth, held by countless threads sewn into the wood, covers the two disjointed pieces of the tables, creating a pale shroud over the wood. The chipped meta\ of the infant's bed bears a tender skin of cloth as weil, evident by lang, rough sutures marring the lengths of each curving bar. Surface as a visual strategy operates on various levels in this sculpture . Similar to the surface of a painting, in which the canvas ground is buiit from layers of pigment that vary in hue and viscosity, Salcedo creates her surface through intricate means. The result is a complex, irreducible depth of tone. In Irreversible Witness, she employs a language of materials juxtaposed, blended, and manipulated to produce an evocative and unsettling surface. The delicately threaded fabric and human hair that encase the wood and the meta\ crib appear as a skin. lt is a fragile but resilient membrane, one that can be sutured closed, embedding the violent assault inside . The materials that Salcedo quietly but deliberately accentuates to create this skin -the organic , fine, pale fabric tethered to wood by dark, lang hairs repeatedly woven in a seemingly endless pat tern, contrasted with the cold, impervious meta\ crib (which failed to secure the helpless baby within its protection)- project a presence that draws the viewer's contemplation, generating an instinctive response to the implicit but absent victims. 50 Subtle as the surface appears upon first glance, the complexity of the various materials that Salcedo layers and interweaves, as weil as the technical challenges faced to produce the "skin," slowly unfolds before the viewer. Upon registering this complexity, the viewer gains the unnerving sense not only that these tables are oddly proportioned, but that they bear a surface that speaks to a history in which materials, not words, convey the deaths that go unseen . Salcedo creates this effect through her process of repetitive action and the ritual implied by sewing thread after thread, hair after hair into wood. Her seemingly tireless efforts to create a surface of uniikely materiais impossibly melded and interwoven - cement, bones, and buttons sunken within cracks to patch furniture and hairs sutured to mend wood - impart an obsessively focused process of reworking . These processes are labors one could associate with caring and healing, as weil as with aesthetic creation. As Madeieine Grynsztejn proposes, they impart a ritualistic element. 51 They indeed relate to domestic and healing rituals, but as I suggest above, they also symbolize the relentless horror of the vioience and the struggle for release through the conquest of the materials. 52 There is an inhuman quality to the dogged, compulsively repeated way that Salcedo sews, binds, melds, and interweaves materials; it departs from the notion of ritual and teeters toward obsession. These are urgent actions inspired by the disorienting conditions of violence. 53

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In addition to producing an effect of freckled , scarred, and worn skin, the surface that Salcedo conjur es through the juxtaposition of varied textures and material traces operates 881 topography of violence . In the Unland series andin her installation Thou-less, in which the surface requir es clo se looking by the viewer to read the extent to which materials have been manlpulated to unsettling effect, dissonant shapes and mediums form elements in disjunction, with fragments pieced together to yield a disorienting whole. No focal point draws the viewer's attention; these are works to be seen from all angles. No narrative builds as one's eyes move from one section to th e next; there is no climax to be found. lnstead, there are parts that intersect, separate,discontinu e, and bend in a surface that speaks to the rupture, irrationality, and silence wrought by violence. In Thou- less (Fig. 17), which includes nine different parts, simple chairs created from g ray stainl ess st eel, joined in an assemb lage or standing alone, reveal surfaces scarred by the t races of war's effects upon household furniture. One of the parts is comprised of six chairs that have been broken , crushed, ripped apart, then fused together, legs twisted and abutting other legs, proportion s destroyed, fronts and backs confused and irrelevant. In some places, the corner of a chair is crumpled like thick paper, the leg beneath bent feebly . One chair sustains a buckled corner and a seat ripped wide, as if spliced by powerful blades; an adjacent chair is forced bet ween the severed pieces . Regardless of the extent to which each chair is mangled, with seats variou sly tarn , crumpled , or adhered to other battered chairs, each piece in its own way bearsa surface that witn essed and recorded violence. 54 Unlike th e previous works discussed, Thou- /ess is not constructed from found furniture. A single old , wooden chair, chosen for its straight lines and simple form, served as the basis for all af th e chairs in the wark . Salcedo created the chairs in wax, cast them in parts in stainless steel, and hand-carved them with dental taals, rendering the grain , gouges, knots, chips, and splinters af warn waad before recanfiguring and assembling the parts into single chairs or a confluence af fu sed chairs.55 The stainless steel registers the textures, blemishes, and scars of wood like a skin; th e buck led, tarn seats sustain the weight and waunds af violence. Salcedo's processwith

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Fig.18 Untitl ed. 20 04 -5 . carve d s tain less stee l, 10 9.2 x 11 6.8 x 78 .7 c rn (43 x 4 6 x 31 i n.). In stitut e o f con tem pora ry A rt , Bos ton , Gift of Barbara Lee, Th e Barbara Lee Col lec ti on of Art by Wo m en , 20 14.36.

sta inless steel is one of creating a surface by rendering into, rather than building upon, theouter layer of the sculpture. She does not add elements such as cloth, hair, bones, or threads to create a surface. lnstea d, she painstakingly carves a material not readily amenable to manipulatlon, producing an evocative, tactile surface that suggests wounded skin. Although the viewer 's attention is first captured by the form of the chairs-the strang manner in whi ch they abut and collide, forcefully melded into a body of many parts (seeFlg.18). alike but di sjointed and incompatible -i t is the surface of the work that projects the tracesof life lived and the nature of existence after violence. The cracks, chips, and gouges that Salcedo carved into the chairs' surfaces impart the normal wear and tear of domestic life, calling to mlnd the now- abse nt victim s who would have used them daily. The major damage-the banged-up sides, cr umpl ed co rners, bent legs , and severed seats-convey the injuries sustained from war , the searing wound s without any treatment, suturing, or salve that blight the exterior of theae chairs with scars marking the sites of violence like the skin of victims. The surface is disorlenting , an effect Salcedo has described as akin to living through war. When close scrutiny reve part icular deformities that are all but masked in the seeming uniformity of the monochrome stee l, the view er is startled and unsettled. The artist maps along this surface the margin where the norm al conditions of life end and war begins. 56 Salcedo's attention to surface and materiality assumes a varied but equally central role In her large-scale public installations. The nature of these works differs from her individual sculptures because they are conceived in dialogue with a specific physical and historical setting and constructed both in the studio and in situ. Consequently, factors beyond her control contribute to the realization of t hese installation s, and the scale of the work carries a different set of challenges. That said, Salcedo pursues the same visual strategies essential to her overall project, albeit in expanded proportlons. In her untitl ed installation for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial in 2003 (Fig. 19), Salcedo filled a vacant lot with 1,550 brown wooden chairs, amassed in a soaring pile that appeared at once haphazardly and deliberately placed. The lot, surrounded on three sides by buildings offour sto ries or more, marks a void where a building was missing . lt is a negative space, not an openlng designed as an entrance, a gathering place , or a crossroads. Her work in Istanbul references the et hnic co nfli ct that marks Turkey's history during and after World War 1,the massacre of hundred of thousands of Armenians and Greeks, and the ensuing tensions between these groups wlth the Turks. The installation's location was not Salcedo's first choice for the work: she originally want ed to install it in an area of Istanbul where Greeks once lived but were forcibly removed by the Turks. Although the biennial 's organizers rejected the site due to its history and the polltlcal com plication s it would create in the context of the large, public biennial, the choice confirms Salcedo's deliberate reference to this violent past. 57 In the site ultimately chosen, Salcedo's work was an insertion within an overlooked, unused gap between buildings, which made its presence all the more surprising - not only because interior furniture was conspicuously piled outdoors In a mass of hundreds , but also because it occupied an unseen, forgotten space on a streetotherwise inhabited by hardware stores. The worn chairs rested upon one another and faced in every direction-forward, backward, up sid e down , sideways - and at all angles; they were interwoven and suspended in place to create a tapestry of wooden legs, backs, and seats interconnected like threads of wood.Salcedo chose chairs with a simple form of straight lines, without curved details or shaped armsor backs, resulting in an overall effect of similar structure and hue. 58 The heap of chairs began at the feet of passersby and soared several stories above their heads. Each was familiar and worn and, most import ant , layered in such a way that no leg, back, or seat jutted out into the sidewalk, creating an improbably flat facade where the viewer peered into the static jumble. Salcedo's installation bore a surfa ce that flowed smoothly from the ground to over 32 feet high, like a curtain of woven wood. She constructed the installation by first carefully placing chairs one upon another against a wall that abutted the st reet and was later removed, then filling the vacant lot behind with more chairs.59 Neith er a pattern nor a visual rhythm of forms characterized this installation. Rather, t he t ower ing cacop hony of wooden chairs projected a teeming chaos in sharp contrast with the smoot h exte rior plane that faced the street.

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TUTU U

TAKIMLARI KESICI TAKIMLARI ÖLCU ALETLER I KESME SIVILARI C.N.C KATERLERI SERT

MADEN UCLARI SERT MADEN IREZ

Fig. 19a a nd 19 b (de ta il) Until/ ed, 20 03. A ppr ox. 1,55 0 wood e n c ha irs, app rox. 10 .1 x 6.1 x 6. 1 m (33 x 20 x 20 f t.). Ep he m e ra l publi c proj ect f o r th e 8t h Int e rn a ti o n a l Is tanbu l Bie nni al, 20 0 3.

Even on this monumental scale, Salcedo meticulously constructed a surface by layering and interconnecting materials. She explains this work as being a kind of topography of ~ar ; it maps (as I suggest Thou-less also does) the blurred line between where the normal cond1ti ons of everyday life end and where the daily existence under war begins . Although a wall of chairs taced the viewer, it was a wall in which each chair was distinguishable , worn from the tou ch of someone missing, and the multitude of chairs stacked behind the flat outer wall wa s vividly evolved. Salcedo forced furnishings that normally belong in the interior of a home into an ext erior space, one that is vulnerable to both natural and sinister elements, pressed between buildings , filling an ill-defined cavity left after a building's destruction. She linked this work not only ~o the violent , ethnic oppression in Turkey, but also to the civil violence in Colombia, although w1thout articulating specific dates and events. Within the Turkish context, even without dire ct referen ces, the hundreds of empty chairs were charged with the historical weight of that country's ma ssacre s. And yet the work speaks to a greater experience shared by those who have known civil violence:

c:

Fig. 20 concre te, glass, 00 Untit /ed , 1998- W ~ 5 , 99 _5• 33 cloth , and rneta l, 18 i~ ) co lleCtl On d (72 '/ •• • 39 '/" • 13 . ir ac ti onal _an . d John M1ller, Francisco Li sa an . the San prornised 9 1ft to Art Mu seum of Modern .

lt is an image of war inscribed in the very center of our lives . .. . All those of us who know violence can relate to this work. lt has an architectural scale, even though it is a negation of architecture. lt is not a work that occupies a space with tranquility , but it is forcibly inscribed in a crack .60 lmplied by the mangled mass of chairs were the many victims and the discontinuities that mark life in war. Ultimately, the surface of this installation projects a kind of fragile skin that holds this life together and bears its scars. Viewing the work, one wonders how it possibly could have remained stable: its planar surface could have ruptured at any moment and the facade could have spilled into the street, the skin ripping open in violent collapse. 4. Time as Material Presence The perception of_!ime-its measurement and general importance - ~the daily lives..Q.f_.peopleljving in,)llar. And time operates as a material pre sence in Salcedo's work . Tue artist has explained that time alternately slows for those held captive, the hours weighing heavily and perversely, and accelerates for those who experience repeated violent events and measure its passage as the compressed moments between the instances of assault .61 Awaiting the return of a disappeared loved one, the hours, days, and weeks blur into one another; no distinction marks the passage of time until the victim's fate is known. The woman's story that serves as the epigraph to this book's introduction is just one example of how, for countless sur vivors of Colombia's political violence , time knows no end and is meaningless when uncertainty and desperate hope define the survivor's every day.62 The distortion of time and awareness of its altered gual i1ies du ring war perme~ce~roject, operating in varied ways thr oug hout ~ ork , from her cement-filled untitled furniture sculptures and the Unland series to her publi c installations Abyss and Noviembre 6 y 7. The extended visual scrutiny required to perceive decisive elements of Salcedo's work - the f insertions ~f bones and zippers , hair sewn into furniture, lace collars weighted beneath cement , \._g rass growing through wood - Q.e.JI!Qnstrates one a.w_ect of time's role in her address. Her sculp tures require careful scrutiny; it is only upon intimate, lengthy study of the surface that the viewer recognizes the unsettling fragments marking her works, which leaves one disturbed to imagine the violence that brought about these effects, as if by viewing these details the viewer has also witnessed the aggression. Mieke Bai associates this aspect of Salcedo's work with tb e co nce et of "duration": the time required to approach, study closely, and read the details visible on the object at close range. The works are "barely visible as art," Bai states, unless one looks carefully and slowly enough to find these visual elements. 63 The Unland sculptures, for example , "work on the basis of the pgrfocmaoce qf dwa1ioo . They slow the viewing down, to the extreme ."64 1 see the time entailed to fully view the precise details and effects generated through Salcedo's exact ing, repetitive process as mirroring the lengthy process she pursued in the making of the work . Encountering Salcedo's pieces incites one to view, engage, and contemplate weil beyond an initial

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ages) 1eel. e rnent , 5 rn Fig. 2 1 (fo ll ow1ng_P 2 ss 2005. sri ck , c 13 9 • 16 - for Aby ' · 4 4 • · ·on and epox y res1n,'/. i t) 1nsta ll all V Art, (14 ½ • 45 ½ • 53 ' . . t ernporar on· th e Tl Tri ennia l of con d'Art e C . . I'I M useo cas teil o d1 Rivo ltaly, 2005 ternp oranea, Turin,

imp ression ; only by taking time , allowing its extended passage , doe s on e com e t o perceive t he extent to which the bureau or the table has been altered , abrad ed, filled , spli ced , or pu nctured. The minutes spent studying the work are punctuated for the view er by brief , st acca t o points of visual clarity when the once imperceptible fragments of bone , worn lace, or hair st and apa rt as moments of sharp realization, pier cing one's consciousness like a strike of viol ence . I,irn e operates in two ways in Salcedo's practice: as a refer ence to a dis c rete mom ent or ~instant (usually the occurrence of a violent act) and as an extended , unending st at e, th e co nd 1~ ion one experiences when living with the uncertainty of politic al violenc e. One of her_unt it led cement -filled furniture pieces from 1998 (Fig. 20) demonstrates both aspect s. The tow ermg (over 70 inches tall) dark wooden cabinet is a striking figure of rich mahogany , a piece of furnitur e one would admire and draw close to touch in someone' s home. Each of it s double door s hol ds four \arge panes for glass. As the viewer approaches the piece , the spaces between the w oode n panes command attention: instead of stacks of pressed and folded garm ents or linens prot ect ed behind glass, there is cold, gray concrete filling the space. As one tries to comprehend how and why someone's fine furniture could hold the weight of cement , one recognize s in th e top left pane a wrinkled mass of flowery embroidered fabric - perhap s a blou se - bunched abov e a sw at ch of patterned shirt sleeves. The viewer then notices metal bars submerged in th e wo od, sec urin g the doors , and a fine line of cement gluing them in place . The collar of a man 's shirt and a redand - gray plaid swatch of another shirt also fight to break from the cement. What ever is within this piece of furniture is permanently imprisoned inside. The most haunting insertion in the concrete is the round collar and tiny button s, on e left undone , of a little girl 's flowered dress. The whole of the delicate garment lies on it s sid e, suffo cated but visible in the cement, as if the child to whom it belongs float s silently beneath it s folds. lt is upon slow, fixed viewing of this sculpture that the absence of bodie s is rev ea led. Time unfolds the layers of process and significance in this work. The victims are silen ced and now entombed within household furnishings, their traces vivid but ma sked, shrouded within the impervious density of gray cement. Moreover , time's passage led to the hardening of th e concrete and to the fi xed, frozen state of these traces of clothing , which as worn garm ent s are themselves suggestiv e of time that has passed in the history of these namel ess victim s. Th e littl e girl's flowered dress and the men's shirts bear the burden of time , sunken beneath th e cement. The bodies these garments covered are long gone, but the stains, lost buttons , and t ears in th e clothing mea sure their history. Some of the most vivid examples of time's material presence appear in Salcedo 's monum ental installations , such as Abyss (Fig. 21) and her perfor mance installation Noviembre 6 y 7. Aby ss is a site-specific work created in a room at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin , ltaly , for the Triennial of Contemporary Art in 2005 . In the 18th century , Carlo Emanuele III confined his father , King Vittorio Amedeo, in this large, brick -vaulted room with windows stret ching to the floor. 65 Thi s room fun ctioned as a space of imprisonment and as a demonstration of the power held over hi s captive . Salcedo lowered the vault, in effect , by building brick and mortar walls down the original walls, stopping just four feet from the floor. These brick walls blocked much of the entrance and framed the threshold so that the viewer was forced tobend slightly while entering th e space. The only light entered the space at weil below eye level, from the base of the French window s now mostly covered by brick. lt was a feat of construction: a massive but textured layering of reddi sh bricks harmonious with the original vault, but of a brighter hue, that bore on its surfac e a latti ce of cement and epo xy resin , lending a material presence carefully created to appear to extend seamlessly from the original vault. 66 This space projected the literal , material weight of time, not only in relation to its 18th century history as a site of confinement , but also as measured by the dense curtain of brick s Salcedo constructed to entomb the room, shutting out the light, obstructing the entrance , and detaining life inside . The four feet of space left between the walls and the floor allowed on e to see the suspended , unfinished state of the thick skin of brick, sparking one's awarene ss of tim e's passage and of this room's transformation over time - also raising the deeply unsettling qu estion of the wall's continued growth and one's possible entombment while observing this threat ening

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space. The viewer was placed in a space of imprisonment and within the psychological state of one who has been abducted . "Time is radically detained and becomes an unsustainable welght 67 on th e hostage," Salcedo has said of this experience. "Time becomes immovable." The welght of the brick walls of Abyss conveyed time, particularly in the context of that historical site, as a mat erial presence that burdens and cannot be forgotten. In Noyiembre 6 y 7 (Fig. 22), time is~cisive, measured b minute and enacted with that specificity. lt is distinct from any other work by Salcedo in that it is a performance piece reallzed duri ~ discrete measured period of time. Salcedo conceived this piec embrance of the tragedy and deaths that occurre on ovember 6 and 7, 1985, in a horrific outbreak of polltlcal v,o ence in ogo a. eca t at Sa ce o ad just returned to Colombia following her graduate studies in New York.) On November 6, a group of M-19 guerrillas took over the Palace of Justice, the harne of the Supreme Court located just across the street from the Presidential Palace, holding the justices and the building's other occupants hostage. The military responded with a brutal attack , at one point smashing a tank through the front doors. A fire ignited in the fray and over the next 27 hours burned much of the building, melting windows. Between the inferno and the fighting , more than 100 Colombians were killed, including 11 of the 12 Supreme Courtjustices.• Following the siege, Salcedo sought remnants from the event, with the intention of using these traces and objects in a work commemorating those two tragic days in November. She wa not allowed access to any such objec~ st were destroyed, as was the building itself. ~d, she said, only the dates remain - November 6 and 7-and she used this indestructible remnant to create an ephemeral work that marked the hours of those fateful days, and that changedover the passage of time she refers to. 69 Her performance, set at the newly reconstructed Palaceof Justice exactl y 17 years after the siege, ~an at 11:25a~ t e rec,se time at which the guerrllla entered the buildin nd · .u.ardon November 6, 1985. A chair attached to an impercept le wire began tobe lowered down the building's facade. Slowly, deliberately gauged to the real-time evolution of the battle, one used chair after another began to descend gradually down two of the building 's adjacent walls that face the street. No clear pattern or center point framed their descent; the chairs appeared sideways, upside down, backward, and facing forward as if someone had just left the seat. The performance began that morning with a single chair descending at a rate of 12 meters per half hour, then throughout the afternoon and into the evening more and mo re followed - some in pairs or clusters, some slowly, others more rapidly, all separated and spread over the adjoining walls, going unnoticed by most passersby until a large enough group hung unsteadily against the facades. Salcedo orchestrated the pace and the number of chalrs to match the times when people died du ring those 27 hours in 1985. Representing the victims claimed, 280 chairs descended in her performance. Salcedo received neither an invitation nor a commission to conceive this work. She planned ed this highly complicated piece upon the roof of the new alaceof Justice under and e~ enormous constraints du ring the rainy_seas~n,with limited access ~o t_hebuilding and without any special financial support .70 No publ1c not1ce announced Salcedo s p1ece;photographs of the 1performance reveal unwitting pedestrians staring up intrigued and unsettled as the empty chairs descended . No narrative accompanied the work; Salcedo later described it as "a blank sheet, 71 an empty space where the spectator could remember." The empty chairs, like those in the Istanbul Biennial installation, represented so many individuals, so many bodies. But in this piece, the chairs signified people known by name and mourned by the nation, although unidentified in thi s performance. During the enactment of her piece, the Palace of Justice becamea site of pilgrimage in the center of Bogota, with people stopping to remember the tragedy. The material presence of time lies in the lowering of each indoor chair in sequence,at a precise hour and minute of a specific day, down the exterior of the building. By creating this installation as a performance , unfolding layer upon layer of cascading chairs, Salcedo conceived a r al-time relivin and remembering o~ hat had occurred there 17 ears earlier; as a result, it stands apart trom her other, fixed works . lt changed with the hours as more chairs descended and time wa aterialized throu h the measure of its passage. lt ended with the visual confir_e..deatbtoll, signifi_ed12.y .J.be lar e cluster of chairs t at were anging on the wall at •·_:-...:..----

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Fig . 22a and 22 b- d (fo llowin g pages) Novi embr e 6 y 7, 200 2. Two 1,undr ed a nd e ighty woo d en chai rs and roPe 1 d,m e n s 1o n s va ri a bl e. Eph e rne ra publi c pr oj ec t at Pa lace o f Ju sti ce, Bo got a, 200 2.

the conclusion of the performance. Other works by Salcedo bear no visual cues of a beginn ing or an end tobe followed in order to understand th e piece . Noviembr e 6 y 7, on the oth er hand , inco rporate s sequential change as a key element-the mov ement of time is centra l to th e m at erialization she creat es. 5. Body to Scale The found chairs that Salcedo incorporated in Noviembre 6 y 7 and throughout her pra cti ce read ily evoke the absent human body . Thi s is just one of the thre e way s she uses corresponden ce of body to scale as a strategy in her practice. The strategy can also be see n in the trace of th e abse nt victim's body implied by her work andin the physical proportions of the viewer's body to the scale of the sculpture and resulting correspondence between the two. lt is evident as weil in the form or substance of the sculpture itself as a kind of distinct being, ind epende nt of the artist who created it. Salcedo's untitled cement-filled furniture pieces from the 1990s, such as a 1995 work featur ing _a bed frame conjoined with a bureau (Fig. 23), demonstrate how body to scale operates in her sculpture to haunting effect. The 1995 work projects a menacing profile; the bed frame bisects the heart of the concrete-filled bureau, piercing the cement and extending out the back, where the bed's headboard looms like a shadow behind the cabinet. Although the fram e appear s slightl y sinist er because it splices the ehest, its scale is not exaggerated (it is the size of a co mmon do ubl e bed) and neither is the bureau's . Thoughts of the bodies that once slept upon the m attr ess held by thi s frame linger; absent bodies are further suggested by the worn headboard. Conjoined as they are in thi s strangely compromised structure, the bed and ehest each remain familiar , and thus they engage rather than distance the audience. The viewer 's relative physical co rrespo ndence - the proportional size of the body to bed and bureau - encourages one's approach to the piece, so that despite the dark collision of forms and entombed interior , one is drawn near to the bed frame, to the drawers, and to the cement-smothered, lace garments within the open ing s, thus accessing the traces of body and the implications of violence emb edd ed within . The approachability of scale to body allows the viewer entree to a work that , if monum ental in sca le, would not invite the same level of intimate study. Tenebrae: Noviembre 7, 1985 (Fig. 24) is another example of a work that employs th e strategy, andin which architecture figures prominently (as in Noviembre 6 y 7). In thi s installati on, Salcedo elicit s the correspondence of body to scale through a language of form s at once familiar and strange, confronting viewers and barring them from a proscribed space. Like Novi embr e 6 y 7, the work refers to the Supreme Court siege, and an ominous quality pervade s it. The install at ion incorporates chairs of basic form and size, but they are transformed and made mon strou s, lying on the floo on their sides, backless, some of their legs elongated excessively, stretching ac ross the room and piercing the wall s. The scale here is recognizable, but in no sense are these chai rs familiar in their lead and steel incarnation. The work is installed in two adjacent room s, with a !arge opening between them . On either side of the opening, the monstrously extended legs of two overturned chairs crisscross the doorway, traversing the walls like narrow lead beam s and blo cking passage through the entrance. Still, one can approach and see through th e barricade into the seco nd, smaller, and more brightly lit room, where 11 chairs lie jamm ed together in a lin e along the floor , their numerous, hyper-extended legs reaching up and across the room, punctur ing the opposite wa/1.The chairs' threateningly peculiar appendages illustrate yet another notion of body to scale: they resemble a kind of creature or distinct living thing , rather th an dome stic furnitur e. Their legs no longer hold a sitting occupant but extend and drive through the wa/1, lik e tho se of a being with brute strength. Tenebrae intrudes on the surrounding architecture, using the rooms ' structure as an integr al element of the work. lt draws the viewer into a space of approachable sca le, then co nfronts and fi xes the viewer there to ponder the mechanics behind this installation . The whole of the two room s, like many of Salcedo's pieces, appears impossibly but fully finished : a temporary installation somehow bisects wall s, steel chairs balance precariously, and all pieces are sec ured in place . In fact , steel plates, imperceptible to the viewer , are attached behind the gallery wall s to

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Fig. 23a and 23b (detail, fol lowing page) Untirl ed, 1995. Wood, ce m ent. cloth, and st ee l, 197 x 120 x 188 cm (77 1/, x 74 1/ox 4 9 % in .). Hir shh o rn Mu seum and Sc u lptur e Garden, Smith so nian In stituti on, Washing t on, D.C., Joseph H. Hir shhorn Purchase Fu nd, 95.26.

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. of a beginnin g d \usion of the performance . Other works by Salcedo bear no v1sua1 cues th e eo nc . . the oth er han , 7, on be fo\\owed in order to understand the p1ece. Nov1embre 6 Y t or an end to . . t I to th e m a eincorporates sequentia l change as a key element - the movement of time 1scen ra rialization she creates . . . ract ice read 1he found chairs that Salcedo incorporated m Nov1embre6 y 7 and throughout her P nd he ily evoke the absent human body. 1his is just one of the three ways she uses corre spo efnc · th e tr ace o t e b 1 ot body to scale as a strategy in her practice. 1he strategy can a so e seen m d t · f h · w er's bo V 0 . absent victim's body imp\ied by her work andin the phys1cal proport1ons o t e vi e . 11 the scale of the sculptur e and resulting correspondence between the two . lt is evid ent as f~~ O in the form or substance of the sculpture itself as a kind of distinct being, independent e

s. Body to Scale

artist who created it. k f tur Sa\cedo's untitled cement-filled furniture pieces trom the 1990s , such as a 199 5 wor ea her ing a bed trame conjoined with a bureau (Fig. 23), demonstrate how body to scale operat es _in t sc~lpture to haunting eftect. 1he 1995 work projects a menacing profile; the bed fr ame bi sec s the heart ot the concrete-tilled bureau, piercing the cement and exten d.mg ou t the ba ck ' wh . here 1 the bed's headboard looms like a shadow behind the cabinet. Although the trame appear s s\ig sinister because it splices the ehest, its scale is not exaggerated (it is the size of a common doub ~ 1 bed) and neither is the bureau's. 1houghts ot the bodies that once slept upon the mattres s he by this frame linger ; absent bodies are turther suggested by the worn headboard. Conjoined a~ they are in this strangely compromised structure, the bed and ehest each remain familiar , an thus they engage rather than distance the audience. 1he viewer's relative physical corre spon dence -the proportional size ot the body to bed and bureau - encourages one 's approa ch to the piece, so that despite the dark col lision of forms and entombed interior , one is drawn near to the bed frame, to the drawers, and to the cement-smothered, \ace garments within th e op enings, thus accessing the traces of body and the implications of violence embedded within . ,h e approachability ot scale to body allows the viewer entree to a work that, it monumental in scale, would not invite the same level ot intimate study. Tenebrae:Noviembre 7, 1985 (Fig. 24) is another example of a work that employs the strategy , andin which architecture figures prominently tas in Noviembre 6 y 7). In this instal\ation , Salcedo elicits the correspondence of body to scale through a \angu age ot forms at once familiar a nd strange, contronting viewers and barring them from a proscribed space. Like Noviembre 6 Y 7 • the work reters to the Supreme Court siege, and an ominous quality pervades it. The in sta\\ation incorporates chairs ot basic form and size, but they are transformed and made monstrous , lying on the tloo on their sides, backless, some of their \egs elongated excessively, stretching across the room and piercing the wa\ls . 1he scale here is recognizable, but in no sense are these chairs tamiliar in their lead and steel incarnation . 1he work is installed in two adjacent room s, with a \arge opening between them. On either side ot the opening, the monstrously extended \egs of two overturned chairs crisscross the doorway, traversing the walls \ike narrow lead beams a nd blocking passage through the entrance. Still, one can approach and see through the barricade into the second, smaller, and more brightly lit room , where 11 chairs \ie jammed together in a line along the floor, their numerous , hyper-extended legs reaching up and across the room, punctur ing the opposite wall. The chairs' threateningly pecu\iar appendages i\\ustrate yet another notion ot body to scale: they resemble a kind ot creature or distinct \iving thing, rather than domestic turniture.1heir legs no longer hold a sitting occupant but extend and drive through the wall, like those ot a being with brute strength.

\Y

Tenebrae intrudes on the surrounding architecture, using the rooms' structure as an integral element ot the work. lt draws the viewer into a space ot approachable scale, then confronts and fixes the viewer there to ponder the mechanics behind this installation . 1he whole ot the two rooms, like many ot Salcedo's pieces, appears impossibly but tully tinished: a temporary instal lation some how bisects walls, steel chairs balance precariously, and all pieces are secured in place . In fact, steel plates, imperceptible to the viewer, are attached behind the gallery walls to

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support t he heavy chair legs made of lead.72 The installation appears to permanently prohiblt the viewer's passage, t he space barricaded by the chairs ' alien appendages. Some writers propose tha t t he barrier and th e intrusion of the lead chair legs across the doorway and into the walll lite rally places t he loss caused by violence inside the viewer 's space. 1would go further and suggest t hat, simil ar to Salcedo's other work , Tenebrae gives form not only to the loss but to the perverse, inhibi t ing, and uncontrollable nature of violence and to the Strangeness that pervadN exist ence and t he spaces and objects once familiar. 73 The titl e sheds fu rt her light on the sense of body and scale in this work. "Tenebrae• refers to th e suff eri ng and death of Christ in the final days of Holy Week, and Salcedo's pairing of th l wo rd wi t h t he exact dat e wh en the Palace of Justice siege culminated in Bogota informs both her use of chairs and the barricade of lead legs. Tenebrae was the first of several works shecreated in respon se to t he Palace of Justice tragedy. 7 • No narrative is stated, but the presenceof chairs - a reference she makes t wo years later in her Noviembre 6 y 7 performance - evokes both t he absent Palace of Ju sti ce victims and the body of Christ in his final days, while the elongated chair legs, menacingly placed as if piercing the wall , subtly imply the long beams of the cro The body is mi ssing but acknowledged in this work , and the chairs manifest a kind of body th is as much of thi s world as of the unknown . Plegaria Muda (Fig. 25) also uses the visual strategy of body to scale informed by particular acts of politi cal viol ence in Colombi a. This work fills an enormous room, enclosing and surround ing t he viewer w it h 166 sculptures - a seemingly endless series of tables , each the length of 1 person's body.75 The tables are identical and of simple construction, the wood stained a weath• ered gray hue. Each sta ndi ng ta ble has another flipped upside down on top of it; between them sits a wedge of dense, dark soil from which vivid , green shoots of live grass sprout improbably t hroug h t he woo den tabletop. Like many of Salcedo 's works, the tables convey what would seem unlikely or imp ossibl e to achieve. (Recall also the hairs defiantly sewn into the wooden tablesIn her Unland series.) Against expectations and odds, she melds materials with diverse propertles to creat e an aestheti c stat ement that one can barely understand and hardly believe. Plegaria Mud a f ills a room with table after table: some are closely set, others spaced apart, one st ands co mpl et ely alone, yet all are visually similar. They are an endless repetition of sllent, haunti ng fo rms d iff ering only in the number of blades of grass sprouting irregularly through the upside- down tabletop . The proportion of each table deliberately compares to the scale of a person ; specific ally, Salcedo has stated that their measurements approximate that of a standard coffln. 11 The pale gray shade of wood and the simple boards recall a rudimentary wooden coffin, the kind in whi ch th e bodi es of the unknown or those on society 's margins are buried. When one enters th e roo m and walks betw een and around the tables , one is reminded of a cemetery with gray to mb stones of comparabl e scale marking the landscape. These sculptures define each site, each body, each death. Unlike gravestones , the tables lack names and dates; only the bright green tufts of grass distin guish one from th e other, like the grass growing around and over cemetery plots. The blades of grass proj ect a vibrant hue, a vision of life sprouting from within these markers. Unlike at a gravesit e, th is grow t h appears at a level just above the viewer's waist, not at his or her feet. There is no need to bend down , for the coffins and blades of grass surround the viewer'sbody. Salcedo delib erat ely engaged the correspondence of body to scale as a visual strategyin t his wo rk, th e imp et us stemming from a particular incident in the early 2000s involving unburied dead in Colom bia; but th e wo rk speaks as weil to the spiral of violence that fuels civil war and co nfl ict thr oug hout th e world . The piece began through research she conducted in 2004 focused on sout heast Los Angele s, the cycle of gang violence, and the ambiguous relationship between victim and perpetr ator in marginal areas where violence predominates. Plegaria Muda is informed by t he kind of "social death" that occurs there, according to Salcedo, in which people exist with litt le hope and no sense of community. She is referenc ing the situation not only in Los Angeles, but also in Colombi a and any other place where people live in precarious economic and social co ndit ions, and wh ere t he consequent violence leads to countless anonymous deaths. 77 In fact , Plega ria Mud a poigna ntly addre sses a specific incident in her home country. Between 2003 and 2009 , nearly 1,500 young people from marginal areas of Colombia were murdered senselessly.

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Fig. 24a and 24b (detail , following page) Tenebrae : Noviembre 7, 1985, 1999 2000 . Lead and steel in 39 parts, overall : 193 x 561 .3 x 555 cm (78 x 22 1 x 218 ½ in .). Rennle Collectlon, Vancouv er.

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At t he t ime, t he governm ent had implemented a reward system for the military if soldiers could verify t hat t hey had kill ed a growin g number of guerrilla insurgents. lt was later reported that t hese incent ives mot ivated som e soldiers to hire young people from poor areas, transport them to other regions, murde r th em, and claim their bodies as "unidentified guerrillas: dischargedIn co mbat." 78 Salcedo was intim at ely aware of these incidents, which received widespread condemnat ion in Colombia once discovered, because she spent months accompanying the mothersII t hey searched graves, eventually revealed by the murderers, trying to find their disappeared son among t he many bodies. She th en join ed the mothers "in the painful and arduous process of llvlng out their mourni ng."79 As Salcedo explains in her essay for the PlegariaMuda exhibition catalogue: 1believe th at Colombi a is th e country of unburied death, the mass grave and the anonymous dead. For thi s reason, it is important to highlight each tomb individually in orde r t o arti culat e an aestheti c strategy that allows us to recognize the valueof each lost life and th e irreducible uniqueness of each grave. Despite not being marked w ith a name, each piece is sealed and has an individual character, as if to indicatea f uneral th at has t aken place.80

6. Disjunction and Disorientation From her small-sca le sculpture s to her monumental installations, Salcedo conjures a senseof disj unct ion and diso rientat ion, whi ch arises both through her juxtaposition of disparate materla and t hrough th e processes she uses to manipulate materials and to install works in improbablt and parti cular spaces.81 Salcedo has chosen this strategy as a way to simulate the confusing and unsettl ing eff ects of war. One of her early unti t led pieces, a 1988 work featuring a crib with a chipped metal frame (Fig. 26), sharply demon str ates th e notion of disjunction that is integral to her practice. A forlo rn met a! crib of small scale (38 x 3 1 x 18 ½ in.), placed incongruously in a gallery, stands uncertalnly on fo ur chipp ed, t erribly worn legs. The crib 's presence is painful to observe, because the work projects a raw qualit y through it s battered metal frame , diminutive size, and the harsh metal scree n and wi res t hat enclose the baby's bed. Where the side rails would normally be to protect t he slumb ering infant , Salcedo constructed a cage made of dark, rusted mesh reminiscent of w indow covering s in pri sons. lt is sewn in place with countless individual rusty wires threading into th e section of mesh and weaving in, out , and over the crib's metal frame. A cloudy swatch of worn, tra nslucent plasti c is entangled in the woven wires along the base and sides of the cr lb; acc ret ions of pale wax coll ect on th e frame , palpable amid the interstices of wires. lt is a deeply distur bin g sculp t ure, it s effects tost ered by the imposition of the rough mesh and wire cage im pr isoning t he crib, by t he disjun ction of purpose and materials , and by its placement in a public space - th e last place one would choose to settle a sleeping infant. 82 The brut al ju xt apo sition in thi s piece sharply conveys Salcedo's use of disjunction as an aest het ic st rat egy to address politi cal violence . This sculpture was created in response to a horrendo us massac re tha t occurred in Segovia, and to an account Salcedo read about a mother who searched for and found the body of her murdered son. She brought him home, where she lovingly began th e ritual s of mourning, slowly cleaning his wounded body, then dressing him in his best cloth es, strugglin g through her grief to say goodbye properly. Salcedo vividly recalled t his story and th e moth er's searing pain while making this sculpture , infusing her process with t he sadness she feit in rememb ering t he mother 's grief . She says of her practice: "What I do is, in my process of making , 1go through , repeat the act of mourning of the person who survives but suff ers th e loss of th eir child. " 83 In her st ainless ste el piec es Noviembre 6 (Fig. 27) and Thou-/ess, disjunction is realized in t he d isor ienting forms she created from manipulating the basic chair , their placement in a viewin g space, and th e ways in which stainless steel is made to bear the texture of wood and t he malleab ilit y of rubber . The chairs in the works were modeled after a simple wooden chair w it h no deco rativ e flouri shes carved into the legs, seat, or back . Salcedo created the chair in

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Fig. 25a and 25 b (following page) Plegaria Muda (details), 2008-10. Wood, mineral co mpound, meta!, and grass, 96 of 166 units, each 164 x 2 14 x 61 c m (64 ¾ x 84 ½ x 24 in .). From the co lle ct ions of lnhotim Collection, Brazil; MA XXI, Rome; and San Fra nc isco Mu se um of Modern Art. Insta llation view at Museo Universitario de Arte Contempora neo, Mexico City, 2011 .

Fig. 26 Unlitl ed, 1989. St ee l. paint , w ax, rnedi ca l t a p e, a nd synth e ti c fabri c, 96.5 x 78.7 x 47 c m (3 8 x 3 1 x 18 ½ in.). Mu se um o f Fin e A rt s, Bo st o n , Con te mp o rary Cur a to r' s Fund. 1992 .20 5.

wax, cast it piece by piece in stainless steel, then reconfigured the pieces of the chair to create a disjunctive sculpture, disturbing for the uncanny quality of its presentation. 84 These chairs are at once familiar but strangely threatening, resembling creatures rather than domestic furniture . Noviembre 6 is comprised of two parts, each consisting of two back-to-back, stainless steel chairs, elevated above the floor by the crumpled, split seats and skewed legs of several backless chairs t hat seem to have been forced beneath them . There is a striking incongruence between t he mangled forms below and the straight lines and commanding presence of the chairs they shou lder. lt is a ju xtapos ition that evokes the rupture and wounded results of political violence buried beneath social controls . lnstalled apart from these two sets of chairs, a single, perversely malformed cha ir balances precariously on two legs, a third contorted appendage providing slight support. That it is a chair is a point of provocation , as it is so dramatically altered that it is recognizable as that type of object only because its seat and four legs resemble that of Salcedo's other stainless stee l chairs. However, only one of those legs serves as support on the floor; the rest are suspended in space, and what had been the chair's two back pieces are now bent, folded over by the hands of some unknown force, one pulled to tauch the floor, the other stretched but mi ssing t he ground. 85 lt is an utterly dysfunctional chair, but a thoroughly potent image of the effects of violence. By negating the very properties that define a chair, this pieceaddressesthe lasting repercussions of war, both psychological and physical. On a large r scale, Salcedo's installation Neither (Fig. 28) also operates through disjunction, emp loyin g a visually understated vocabulary to disorient both space and the viewer'ssense

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of grounding within. Created to fill the principal gallery at the White Cube exhibition space in Hoxton Square , London , the piece appeared to grow from within the walls, a work - like many of Salcedo 's installations - that seamlessly evolves within the setting in which it is pr esented. Meter upon meter of floor-to -ceiling expanses of razor-sharp chain - link fencing cut through the white plastered walls . In some places , the fencing is so deeply submerged that it appear s only as a repeated , shadowy pattern of links . In other areas, the meta! links cut just into the surfa ce, creating diamond - shaped pieces of white plaster sliced by the wire, palpably dissecting the wall and constraining the space . Finally, sections of chain -link fencing jut menacingly oft the wall within th e gallery and restrict the entrance into the space; the sharp wire edges threaten to punctur e or tear the fabric or flesh of the viewer who draws too close. 86 This installation incorporated indoors what more rightfully belongs outside. Chain - link fencing, the material ubiquitous worldwide in areas of confinement, is associated with pri sons and other sites where people are controlled . Salcedo's title suggests that the space is uncertain, but clearly without freedom. Upon entering the installation , one passed through the jutting wire edges into a space with no focus, no narrative; only the sense of disjunction was discernible. The psychological connotations associated with the chain - link fencing, with razor -sharp edges , do not belong in the pristine room of the gallery. Salcedo designed the space to disorient through this

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Fig. 27a a nd 27b (detai l) Novi e mbr e 6, 200 1. S t ain less s tee/ lead, wood, and r es in in thre e pa rt s: 1 18 .5 x 75 x 4 5 c m (46 % x 2 9 ½ x 17 1 1/,o in .); 112.5 x 78 x 41 crn (44 5/16 x 3 0 '1/,o x 16 in .); a nd 61.5 x 38 x 43 crn (24 3/ ,o x 15 x 17 in .). Daro s Latin arnerica Co ll ec ti on , Züri ch.

'\

Fig_.28a and 28b (detail) Ne,rll er, 2004. Stee l fenc in g , drywa ll, 8nd paint , 4.9 x 7.4 x 15 rn (16 3/ , 6 x 24 1/•_x 49 3/,0 ft.) ln hot irn Co ll ect ion , Bra z,I. Insta llati on view at White Cube London,2004. '

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Fig. 29a and 29b (detai l) Shibb olelh, 2007. Concrete and stee l, lengt h: 167 rn (548 ft.) . In s t a l lat ion v iew a t Turbin e Ha ll , Tale M ode rn , London, 2007.

incongruence, creat ing a visually minimalist room, one that stopped the viewerin an immobile, litera l cage. lt was a space neit her of imprisonment nor of freedom; the fencing was visible,but was embedded in some sections to the point of disappearing. lt lurked threateningly, on the edge of conf inin g the viewer , suggest ing a place and a sense of time that was frozen and distinctly separate from t he active enviro nment of the street outside the gallery. Not on ly the materiality of the installation but this notion of suspended and immobile timeth e exper ience of time that Salcedo has said plagues those held captive-adds to the work'a sense of disjun ction. Salcedo proposed this piece as a reflection on the inhuman, uninhabitable other wor lds of concentration camp s, those zones of confinement outside the law: not only thoae from World War II, but throughout time and cultures, from the Soviet Gulag to places in former Yugos lavia , Rwanda, Guantanamo, and the jungle sites in Colombia where kidnapped victlm are held. 87 Although t he chain- link fencing conjures up the sense of enclosures (either forced or vo luntary), the idea that this inst allation referred to concentration camps and hoiding penl from diverse eras and cu ltur es was not readily apparent within the pristine White Cube space. Neither did not spec ify the "w ho, what , when, or where ," but it did impart a space of silence-at once om inous and contemp lat ive, wher e thoughts about the imminence or consequencesof violence cou ld transp ire. Salcedo began her practice focused entirely on the victims and politics of Colombia , conceiving sculptures that addresse d the source of her experience and the certainty of the unacknowledged horror t hat thousands of her countrymen lived and feit helpless to change. lndeed, many Colomb ians perceived themselves tobe complicit in the cycle of violence that was perpetuated year after year from the 1980s through the 2000s. In order to make her address on this polltical vio lence (and, as her practice came to evolve, the political violence that rages in other cultures throughout the world), and to do so through means that do not rely on figurative images of

11 3

wounds and victims, Salcedo instead employs specific visual strategies to convey the absence and lingering memory of those lost as weil as to suggest the unlivable conditions brought about by civil war. She fastidiously approaches every detail of each work, and this focus is essential to her statement . Her materials and commonly used strategies work together and separately to make palpable the conditions of a violence fed by a history and a politics. Without pictorializing or providing a narrative element, the issues Salcedo addresses are not always legible, and this is at once a risk she takes and a deeply considered approach that defines her practice as a major international artist. Still, for all the lengthy and exhaustive research , planning, building, and creating that goes into her work, her intentions do not always succeed in conveying the issue at stake. For example, Shibboleth (Fig. 29), the monumental crevice splitting the floor of the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, is a work that Salcedo built segment by segment, carved with dental tools, and inserted into the cement, ultimately creating a fissure that appeared to divide the very foundation of the space . The technical skill required to achieve this chasm, the wonder of it spreading from one end to another of the vast hall, drew attention and earned the widespread interest of viewers and critics. The title specifically references a biblical practice of using language to determine whether one belongs in a group, an act Salcedo linked critically to the long legacy of racism, the continuing fracture of societies, and the exclusion of a huge underclass in areas across the globe. However, most viewers did not focus on this message and were instead fascinated by its creation. 88 As she herself has discussed, the piece did not achieve what she intended; the artifice was greater than the art. 89 This is the challenge posed by Salcedo 's decision to charge materials-not figural images-with the weight of expressing her vital and compelling statement about the political violence that claims victims not just in Colombia but around the world.

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1. Doris Salcedo, in discussion wit h the autho r, Apr il 22, 2013; and w ith arc hit ect Carlos Granada, June 25, 2013 . 2. See pp. 156-60 for Salcedo's exhibition history. 3. See Carolina Ponce de Le6n, "Acc iones de Duelo," EI Tiempo, May 12, 1990. Criti cs also discussed how Salcedo usesobjectaon a hum an scale to create th e tension between life and death in wo rk bot h simpl e and comple x, and noted that in an Installation wlth few work s, th e co mbin ati on of th e visual elements and the artist's inten ti ons created an emotiona l charge so great that vlewers-. pulled int o the work th at captur ed the state of the nati on at the tim e- into work that provided , as critic Marfa Claudia PariasDUNn put it, "th e mental im age of our not hing." See "Doris Salcedo, Misi6n: Aco rralar la concienc ia," EI Tiempo, May 13, 1990; and Marfa Claudia Parias Duran, "La Vida en Yeso," EI Espectador , J une 5, 1990. 4. Julie Rodrigues Widholm , "Presentin g Absence: The Work of Doris Salcedo," in Doris Salcedo, ed. Julie Rodrigues Wldholm and Madeleine Grynsztejn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Museum of Conte mpo rary Art , 2015), 20, 27. Widholm statH thatIn a May 20, 2014, co nversation wit h Salcedo, the artist said th at w hen she includ ed t he doll s, she was thinking of the young boyaIn Medellin who were forced by drug cartels to serve as hired assassins, or sicarios. 5. Migu el Gonzalez, "Premio del Salon Nacional, Doris Salcedo: Una escultu ra simb 61ica," Premio Naciona/ de/ Sa/6n Naciona/(J anulfY 1987 ). Discussion of her work ce nte red on how she was part of a ge nerati on of Colombian artists breaking from the mlnlmalllt language of known nation al arti sts, such as sculptor Edgar Negret . These new arti sts were creating works with used materlalathet carry symboli sm and significanc e, allowing the viewe r to connect wit h th e wo rk physically and spiritually. 6. Carolyn Alexander, in discussion w ith th e autho r, J une 27, 2013. Alexander explained that her former partner saw Salcedo'I wortc in an exhibiti on in Huelva, Spain, and recomme nded it to her. The gallery, th en called Brooke Alexande r, invited Salcedo to exhlblt In a gro up show, Matth ew Benedict, Jim Hodges, Doris Salcedo, in 1993, whi ch included Atrabiliarios . Salcedo has also been repr1Hntacl by Whit e Cube gallery in London. Both galleries regularly exhibit her work and fr equently help support the long, deeply researc hld and deliberat ive process of co nceiving and co nst ructi ng her pieces. As is tru e with many contemporary artists whose worka ll'ltlll specialized mat erials; a part icu larly co m plicated, labor- inte nsive creative process; and enormous scale, outside support from a gellery or a private or publi c co mm ission is necessary to accomplis h m uch of Salcedo's art. 7. Dan Cameron, "Absence Makes the Art : Doris Salcedo," Artforum (October 1994): 88- 91; and Alexander , in dlscusslon wlth tha auth or. Alexander reported th at Smith came into Alexander's Offi ce aft er viewing Salcedo's pieces and told her that Salcedo's wotk was imp ortant , that she was an artist to watch . Acco rding to Alexander, th at exhibition and the positive critical response lt drewled to Salcedo's tarne in the United States. 8. "La escultur a co lomb iana Doris Salcedo, Premio Velazquez de Artes Plasticas 2010 ," EI Pais, May 5, 2010. 9. "Dori s Salcedo y el contenido de la forma, " Elespec tador.com, May 7, 2010. 10. Salcedo, in discu ssion w ith the author, Apri l 23, 20 13. 11. "La artista Beatriz Gonzalez interviene los colum barios del Cemente rio Centr al," EI Tiempo , May 6, 2009. 12. Salcedo, in Carlos Basualdo, "Carlos Basualdo in Conversati on w ith Doris Salcedo," in Doris Salcedo , ed. Nancy Prlncenthal, Carlol Basualdo, and Andreas Huyssen (Londo n: Phaido n Press, 2000) , 21. 13. lbid . 14. Hans- Mi chael Herzog, ed., Cantos Cuentos Colomb ianos: Arte Colombi ano Contempor aneo/ ContemporaryColomb/anArt (Zurldt: Daros- Latin america; Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2004), 160. 15. Salcedo, in discussion with the autho r, Apri l 23, 2013. 16. Salcedo, in Basualdo, "Carlos Basualdo in Conversati on w ith Doris Salcedo," 17. 17. As th e artist has said, creating a work for an exterior or public space such as th e Istanbul Biennial carries different challengHthan creating it private ly. When creat in9 a lar9e installatio n, Salcedo mu st alte r and evolve her concept based on physical clrcumstan c:ea as th e work is being insta lled. Locati ng the materia ls she wa nts for t he piece can be comp licated, _particularly In another country and cultur e, and as the work is being constructed , th e unfam 11i ar co nd1t1ons- fr om mat erial constra1nts to labor customs - present issues th at challenge Salcedo's preferred level of con trol. She said: "I think my brain functions differently when thlnklng of 8 plece for a pub lic lexteriorJ space than w hen I am t hinkin g about one fo r an int erior space . When I am working for an lndoor space,1 think about it as I am do ing it. . .. lt is diff erent in a publi c space: a proj ect mu st already be in existence and should conclude wlth 1 piece of work .. . . In a pub lic space the city itself is present. Buildings have a charge and a memory , and all these factors enrlch the piece . ... lnstead, w hen I face a white cube, getting through it or t ransfo rmi ng it in any way is very difficult." Herzog, Cantos Cuenio, Colombi anos, 144; and Salcedo, in disc ussion wi th the aut hor, Ap ril 23, 2013. 18. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Jo hn Stilgoe (Boston: Beaco n Press, 1994), xxxv- xxxvi, 7- 8. Bachelard lntroducH topoana lysis, "th e systemati c psychologica l study of th e sites of our intim ate lives." 19. Jean Franco, "Killing Priests, Nuns, Women, Childr en," in On Signs, ed. Marshall Blonsky (Baltimore : Johns Hopkins Unlve rslty Press, 1985), 414-2 0. 20. lbid., 415- 16. 21. Bachelard, Poetic s of Space, 7. 22. Salcedo, in Basualdo, "Carlos Basualdo in Conversati on w ith Dor is Salcedo," 12. 23. Salcedo, in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombia nos, 154. 24. Carlos Basualdo, "A Mode l of Pain," in Doris Salcedo: NEITHER (London: Whit e Cub e, 2004), 32; and Herzog , CantosCuenro. Colom bi anos, 154. Salcedo te ils Herzog !hat "it could be said th at all my work stem s fr om that extreme difficulty or imposslblllty of living" during war. 25 . Charles Merewether, "To Bear Witness," in Doris Salcedo, ed . Dan Cameron and Charles Merewether(New York:New Museum of Cont empor ary Art, 1998), 20. 26. Natalia Gut ierrez, "Conversation w ith Doris Salcedo," Art Nexus 19 (January- March 1996): 49. 27. lb id. 28. Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombianos, 152. . . . . . ". 29 . Santiago Villaveces- lzquierdo, "Art and Med1a-t1on: Reflect 1ons on V1olence and Represent at1on, in Cultura/ Producers in Perilous States: Editin g Events, Docume nting Change, ed. George E. Marcus (Chicago: Univers1tyof Chicago Press, 1997), 241 - 43. 30. lbid., 241- 42. . . . . . . . 3 1, Salcedo has descr ibed th e interv iews as test 1mo ny fro m a v1ct 1m. Salcedo, in d1scuss1onw1th the author, April 9, 2011. Salcedo described th e days she spent sitting around kitchen tab les talking w ith and listening to th e mothers , siblings , and relatives of the dlsappeared. She said their experiences - what they endured, how th eir llves we re for ever changed , and how deeply they mourned- were pivotal to th e sculpture s she created. See J ill Ben nett, "Art , Aff ect, and th e 'Bad Death ': Str ategies for Communicatlng the Sense of Memory of Loss," Sign s: Journal of Women in Cu/ture and Soc,ety 28 (1) (2002): 342. B~nnett states tha_tSalcedo made long research trip s int o the inte rior of Colombia, w here she sp~.ke w1th th e fam il1es who had been v1ct 1m12ed by polit1cal violence . . . . . . . 32. Gutierrez , "Conversation w 1th Dons Salcedo, 49. 33 . Mereweth er, "To Bear Witn ess," 7. Salcedo has also sa1dth at in wo rking cl osely w1th the surv1vmg parent, sibling , or spouse, she learns so much abo ut the absent victim t hat she 1s ab_le to create a material presence t_hat speak s to that person and to the act of mourni ng lived by the survivor day after day. Salcedo , in d1scuss1on w 1th the auth or, April 23, 2013.

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34. Jill Bennett, Empathi c Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Cont emporary Art (Stanford , Calif .: Stanford University Press, 200 5), 54, 61. Bennett think s of Salcedo's art as operating tran sactionally: sensati on is emb edded in the wor k, and it trigger s aff ec t through the viewer's direct engagement. For Bennett , Salcedo's pieces bear an elusive trace of th e pain shared by vict ims with th e arti st; thi s pain is communi cated thr ough th e obj ect, th ereby enacting th e stat e of grief in th e viewer. After the events of September 11, Bennett extended her argument, suggesting that Salcedo's work is a kind of political art th at speak to international incide nts of tr aum a _a_ nd that generates affect for viewers wo rldw ide. See Jill Bennett , " Tenebrae aft er Septemb er 11: Art, Empat hy, and t he Globa l Polit1cs of Belonging ," in World Memory : Personal Trajec tories in Global Time, ed. Jill Bennett and Rosanne Kennedy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 188, 190, 193. 35. Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Colombi anos, 160. 36. Bennett, "Art , Aff ect, and th e 'Bad Death ,"' 344- 45. 37. Princenth al et al., Doris Sa/cedo, 49. Princenthal comp ares th e niches to th e glass-fro nted boxes that hold m em ento s of th e deceased in cemeteries in Spanish-speaking cultur es, but makes clear th at Salcedo did not inte nd for the nic hes to reca ll th ese burial boxes, as they are not typi cal in Colombi a, wh ere, in fact, cremati on is co mm on. See also Charles Merewet her, "Nami ng Vio lence in th e Work of Doris Salcedo," Third Text 24 (Autumn 1993): 42, 44. Mereweth er stat es th at th e niches reca ll the "cem etery as sit e" and suggests th at by placing th e niches in the museum co ntext, the museum assumes the role of "mausoleum of forgetting." 38. Salcedo, in discussion with th e auth or, April 23, 2013. Salcedo explained th at, beca use she was given the se shoes, she created th e installation to preserve and present th em untou ched and carefully fr amed. She chose th e skin of a cow bladder to cove r th e niches as a direct reference to the indigniti es th ese wa rnen suff ered. Held in capti vit y, abused, and denied a place to attend to th eir physical needs, th ey were unable to relieve th emselves in privat e or to clean and care fo r their bod ies. See Olga Visa, "Do ris Salcedo: The Dynamic of Violence," in Distemp er: Dissonant Themes in the Art of the 1990s, ed. Neal Benezra and Olga Visa (Washington, D.C.: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculptur e Park; New York: D.A.P./Distribut ed Art Publishers, 1996). 87; and Princenth al et al., Dori s Salce do , 49. 39. The polit ical situati on in Colombi a was extremely compli cated during th e tim e Salcedo began to create sculpt ure, in parti cu lar when Atr abili arios was conceived. Aft er Colombi a signed an extr aditi on tr eaty w ith th e Unite d States in 1979, guerri llas, narco leaders, and oth er opponent s prot ested th e tr eaty and th e U.S. involvement in Colombian polit ics th at it repre sented by assassinating politi cal and judi cial leaders, newspaper edit ors, and lawyers, leaving hundr eds dead. In 1987, th e Colom bian Supreme Court voted to annul th e tr eaty, in a vot e of 13- 12. Simult aneously, right -win g paramilit ary organizati ons began to form in th e late 1980 s, repor tedly oft en established by th e Colombian militar y. Their battle was against th e lefti st rebels, but th ey we re said to have assassinat ed left- leaning politi cal figur es as weil. Both the paramilitarie s and th e guerrill as in the late 1980s into the 1990s we re said to vio len tly target politi cians, th e police, and th eir familie s as a means of infl uencing th e governm ent. In short, they used violence fo r po liti ca l ends: By 1993, newly elected U.S. President Clinton, citing Colombia's dreadful human rights reco rd, ended 12 years of w hat had been considerable financial support for the Colombian governm ent and milit ary, and in 1996, the Unit ed States decerti fied the co untry, stopping all foreign aid and impo sing trade sanctions on the then eco nomically unstable nati on. See Fernan Gonzalez, "The Historical Background of Colombia 's Recent Violence," in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Co/ombianos, 299-3 02. Backgrou nd inf orma ti on pre sent ed here was also gleaned from a segment from PBS's New sHour called "Colombi a's Civil War." 40. Bennett , "Art, Aff ect, and th e 'Bad Death,"' 344. She goes on to say that th e personal eff ects instead "are absorbed into a perceptu al scene in whi ch th ey refuse to com e to lif e, fail to signify. The shoes, barely di scernibl e behind th e thick hew n skin s, are less concrete signifi ers of their owners than objects that now cannot be grasped, touched, or brought int o foc us." Mieke Bai also discusses w hat is known as th e "Holocaust effect," referring to th e piles of shoes that are all that rernain aft er m ass violence or ge nocide. Th e shoes testify to the enormous number s of lives lost. Bai does not suggest th at Salcedo collects heaps of shoes, but rat her that the placement of warn shoes in her work recalls th e kind s of aesth eti c approach to th e tr agedy of mass killi ngs. See Mieke Bai, "Ear th Aches: The Aesth eti cs of th e Cut," in Doris Salcedo: Shibboleth (London: Tate, 2007), 45. 41 - Merewether , "Naming Violence in th e Work of Doris Salcedo," 42. Mereweth er goes on to say: "T hus, although Salcedo's shoes appear to be without a clear identity, they were for th eir own ers, neverth eless, personal reliquaries and objec ts of remembrance, and something of thi s diff erence draw s us back into th e fold s of an individuated histo ry: a place of origi n, a wea rer, fami ly ties. These are shoes from farnili es of warn en w ho have disappeared." 42- Doris Salcedo, email co rrespond ence with Emily Pulit zer, January 22, 2003. Salcedo explains th at th e wo rd "at rabi liarios" is Spanish but is not a comm on ward, and th at she purpo sefully sought th at str angeness. She explains th at its Lati n roo t comes from atra for black and bi/is for bile. The closest English translation is "atrabilious," wh ich th e Oxford English Dict ionary defines as "i rri table," but Salcedo prefers that it not be tr anslated. Some catalogues have tr anslated it as "defi ant." 43. Merewether, "To Bear Witn ess," 140. 44. Villaveces-lzquierdo, "Art and Media-tion," 238. 45 - Merewether, "To Bear Witness," 22- 23; and Andreas Huyssen, "Unland: The Orphan's Tunic," in Princenth al et al., Dori s Salcedo, 96. 46 - Paul Celan, "Night Rode Hirn," in Poems o/ Paul Ce/an, tran s. Michael Hambur ger (New York: Persea Books, 1972). 287. 47 · Salcedo, in discussion with th e author , April 23, 2013. When asked about th e painstaking and imp ossibly c halleng ing processes she undertakes in making her work, Salcedo said that she focuses on th e im age she is tryin g to m ake, and th at th e processe s and matenals she uses foll ow as th e requisite path to get to th e irnage she seeks. 48 - Cathy Caruth , Unclaim ed Experience: Traum a, Narrativ e and History (Baltim ore: J ohns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 9 1- 92 . 49 · Salcedo, in Herzog, Cantos Cuento s Colombian os, 163. She states: "I thin k a surf ace is th e most essenti al aspec t and I alway s co nnect it to vulnerability, to our fragility and our hum an co nditi on. For thi s reason I make textur es !hat, in spit e of being in ce ment or st eel, are fragil e. lt is th at fragility I want to point out so th at it leaves a perm anent legacy." 5o. Mereweth er, "Naming Violence in th e Work of Doris Salcedo," 38- 39. Mereweth er discusses th e idea th at m eaning in Salcedo 's wo rk ,s created thr ough "att ention to the tactil e, visceral qualit y of the material and th e int erventi ons to w hich it has been subjec ted." 51. Madeleine Grynsztejn , "Voice of th e Invisible," Tate Etc. (Auturnn 2007): 47- 48. 52 · Merewether, "Narning Violence in the Work of Doris Salcedo," 40. Referring to Salcedo's untitl ed wo rk from 1989- 90 that featu res plast er-coa ted, stacked, folded whit e shirt s pierced by a steel stake, Mereweth er considers th e arti st's early int erest in "exploring th e geS!ur_es and labor that went int o th e production of th e piece as a metaphor for th e processes of violence." In th e 1989 - 90 installat~on, v,olence is vivid ly suggested by th e sharp metal stake irnpaling th e stack of men's shirt s; Salcedo created th e w ork foll ow ing t : . 1988 massacres at th e La Negra and La Honduras plantati ons in Colombi a. Hence, it bears a histori cal link to a vio lent event in ~ ich num erous men were killed, and the shirt s evoke tho se victim s in term s far more directly th an th e bones or butt ons insert ed in t e La Casa Viuda sculptu res; the hairs and thr eads sewn over th e crib and int o th e tables in th e Unland series; or the hand- carved, ~~uged Sl ainless steel _chairs spliced, fused, and twi sted in Thou- /ess. For thi s reason, 1 do not discuss t he 1989- 90 installati on at th_1s book, w h,ch focuses on the body of Salcedo's work th at conveys th e tr ace - not th e lit eral, d irect statement - of the g th In_ a~ sent v,ct,rn and th e violent act . In Atrabili arios, th e only wo rk discussed in detail th at incl udes an entir e piece of clothin g rath er t an a fragment, th e arti st presented th e shoes emb edded in a wall behind a thick, cloudy anim al bladd er. Thu s, readin g th e shoes as th e lit eral tr ace of the absent bodies is cornpli cated by th e skin shroud . 5 Salcedo, in discussion with th e author, April 22, 2013. Salcedo, when describin g her process and the fasti dio usness she requi res 0 erself, says th at thi s is part of th e process of getting back at violence's eff ects. 4 ~ - Basualdo, "A Model of Pain," 31-32. Basualdo said of Salcedo's stainl ess steel sculptur es that "th eir ow n tr oubled mate riality orces th em to be at once witn esses and proof of th e procedur es th at made th em w hat th ey are."

;i,

11 6

55. Salcedo, in discussion w ith the aut hor, Apri l 22, 2013 ; and Salcedo's assistants Carlos Granada and Joaquin Sanabrla,In dllcussion w ith the author, Apri l 9, 2011 . Salcedo origina lly wa nted to use a chair from the debris at the site cf the Palaceof Juetlce tragedy, but the siege and ensuing fire destroyed everyt hing. She "had to make something from nothing," and thls simple,oldc:hllr was the mode l she chose. 56. Doris Salcedo, "Proposal for Unrealized Project: Marsum Churchyard in Groningen, The Netherlands, March 2002," in DorisSa/c:edo: NEITHER, 27. Salcedo write s in her proposal abo ut c reating a "Topogra phy cf war" that I would compare to the waysIn whlchlhe co nceives and constru cts surface in her sculpture s. As she proposed: "T he presence cf the subject in this piecewillbe rernoved •• ,. II wil l be made up cf several part s th at conjoin and inte rsect with one anot her, to the point where both logic andordercollapse.TM piece w ill be devoid cf a centre or a climax." 57. Carolyn Alexander, in discussio n with the author , April 5, 2013 . 58. Salcedo , in di scussion w ith the auth or, Ap ril 23, 2013. The artist exp lained that she searched throughout Turkeyto find the 1,550 chairs, a difficu lt task because, she said, mo st Turkish chairs are emb ellished with curves and a visual lyricism contrarytothe simple form she sought . 59. lbid. The chairs towered high er toward the street and lowe red in height as they receded into the back cf the vacantlot. She placed the chairs with th e help cf mountain climb ers, who taught her how to climb and rappel. 60. Dori s Salcedo, "Dori s Salcedo,'' in Guerra y Pa: Simposio Sobre La Situaci6n Socia/, Polltica, y Artfstica en Colombla, ed. Eugenlo Valdes Figueroa (Zurich: Daros- Lati name rica AG, 2006), 139. 61. Salcedo, in discussion wi th the aut hor, April 9, 2011; and Salcedo, in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Co/ombianos, 160-61 . 62. Vil laveces- lzquierdo, "Art and Media-tion," 241 . 63. Bai, "Earth Ac hes," 49; and Mieke Bai, 01 What 0ne Cannot Speak: Doris Sa/cedo's Po/itica/ Art (Chicago: Universlty of Chicago Press, 2010). 134 - 41. 64. Bai, 01 What 0ne Cannot Speak, 140; empha sis in original. 65. lbid., 23 0- 3 1. 66. Salcedo, in discussio n wit h th e author, Apri l 23, 201 3 . The lengths Salcedo pursu ed to create this seamless growth of brlckfrom th e vault tow ard the floor entailed searching throughout Colombia for bricks cf the same hue, texture, and size, which herasslstantl found in ovens dotted throughout th e cou ntry. Salcedo bought and took apart these ovens, sliced the bricks in half lengthwlse, then layered each brick with mo rt ar to create wal ls held w ith in a !arge meta ! frame. The brick "walls" were sent to ltaly, then placed and secured in th e room at th e Castello di Rivoli. 67. Salcedo, in Herzog, Cantos Cuentos Co/ombianos, 161. 68 . lbid ., 158; and Marcos Palacios, Between Legitimacy and Violence: A Histo ry of Colombia, 1875 - 2002, trans . Richard Stoller (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006). 206 -7 . ~ Salcedo, "Doris Salcedo,'' in Valdes Figueroa, Guerra y Pa, 145. QVSa lcedo , emai l correspo ndence w ith the aut hor, July 22, 20 13, Ir ans. by the author. In reference to Noviembre 6 y 7, Salcedo stated: " I made thi s werk because I needed to make it. Nobody co mmi ssioned it, nobody invited me to make it, 1dld not haveany type c f econom ic support , everything I did 011 my own." Also, Salcedo, in discussion with the author, July 15, 2015 , and Aprll 24, 2018. 71. Salcedo, in discus sion with the aut hor, July 15, 2015, and April 24, 2013. Salcedo explained that there was no announcement beca use it was not until the afte rnoon cf the day before the performance that she received official permission to do lt. Glven the exactitude c f the werk , it was with extraordinary pressure and good fortune that she and her team were able to reallze thls plece on the day and tim e it had to occur . Because it took place du ring the rainy season, the apparatuses that Salcedo's asslstants bullt and placed on the building' s roof had tob e espec ially comp licated str ucture s. The devices needed to allow for the weight and COIIH• quen ces cf heavy rain, as we il as to bear the extr eme ly measured descent cf each chair or group of chairs. They were deslgnedto succee d und er conditio ns and in a manner untested , in the center cf the nation's capital, under the scrutiny of heavy securlty forc-. The actua l pro cess cf designing th ese devices and installing th em on the roof cf the Palace of Justice was limited to speclflc hours on Sunday, as, not surpri singly given the history cf what had occ urred at the building, the Palace has severe access restrlctlons. In short, it is nearly unbelievab le that Salcedo was able to c reate this on-s ite installation , and that she did so on the exact daysand over th e same hours as th e siege is extr aordi nary. 72. Alexander, in discussion with th e author, April 16, 2012. Alexander and Bonin first installed Tenebrae: Noviembre 7, 1985 In an exhibiti on in 2000. In a discussion on April 23, 2013, Salcedo mentioned that Tenebrae was her first piece that was cast as one complete, finished form. Her typica l process of co nst ructi ng, joining, carving, and working each sculpture by hand, such that the surface reflects her focused creative expression, did not occu r when she made thi s piece. Salcedo explained this in the context of a dlscusslon about the oth erworldliness of the sculptur e: she described th e working process as if not every aspect was entirely under her control. 73. Edlie L. Weng, "Hauntin g Absences : Witne ssing Loss in Doris Salcedo's Atrabiliarios and Beyond," in The Image and the Wltness: Trauma, Memory and Visuaf Cultur e, ed. Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas (London: Wallflower Press, 2007), 183-84. 7 4. Salcedo, in discussion with th e author , Apr il 22, 2013. 75. The insta llat ion size cf thi s piece can vary. At minimum, 5 tables must be included; the largest configuration held 186 tables w ithin an indoor space. 76. Salcedo , in discussion with th e author , Apri l 9, 2011 ; and Mieke Bai, "Waiting for the Political Moment," in Doris Salcedo: Plegarla Mud a, ed. Magnu s Jensner and lsabel Carlos (Munic h: Prestel, 2011), 79. 77. Salcedo , in discussion with th e aut hor, Apri l 11, 2011 , and July 16, 2015; and Salcedo, "ArtisTalk ," lecture at HarvardUnlverslty, Cambr idge, Mass., Apri l 23, 2013 . 78 . Salcedo, in discussion wit h the author, Apr il 11 , 20 11 ; and Salcedo, in Jen sner and Carlos, Doris Safcedo: PlegariaMuda, 25-28. 79. Salcedo, in Jensner and Carlos, Doris Safcedo: Plegaria Mud a, 26. 80. lbid. 81 . Salcedo, in discussion w ith the author, Apri l 23 , 2013 . 82. lbid. When asked abou t her choice cf material s for this we rk, Salcedo stated , "The materials and the process are not what l'm t11inking about so much as th e image l'm trying to create, it's the image I know I need to make that l'm thinking about." 83. lbid . 84. Salcedo, in discussion with the author , April 22, 2013. Salcedo said of th ese stainless steel sculptures: "lt's not a cast,setplece. lt was cast in pieces then reconfigured. And every singl e detail was hand carved with dental tools ." 85. Basualdo, "A Mode l c f Pain,'' 30-31. Basualdo compares these chair s to a defun ct or made-up language: "Their dysfunctlon calls to mind absurd vowe ls, vestig es cf an archaic or invented languag e capable of assuming a glossological seriousness; they are term s th e meanings cf w hich have been eschewed, the part s subjected to the pressure cf being put in an unprecedented and absurd co nt ext, later assemble d with a violence that rej ects the impreci sion cf brutality. What animates the chairs is that they have not lost th e w ill to cont inue to mean something and yet, w hatever they mean has become hopelessly incomprehensible .•

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86. Salcedo, in discussion with the author, October 21, 2012. Salcedo explained that she selected a specific kind of chain -link fencing that is used in places where people are imprisoned and that has edges sharp enough to slice open one's hand s if tou ched. In this installation, the knife -like edges served to cut through the drywall, creating the effect that a material that belong s in the real':' of internment camps was embedded in the gallery wall s. See also Rod Mengham , "' Failing Better ': Salcedo's Traj ecto ry," in Don s Sa/cedo: NEITHER, 11. Mengham describes the plasterboard placed in front of the gallery wall s with fencing embedded into 11as seeming tobe part of the walls. 87. Doris Salcedo, "Proposal for a Project for White Cube," in Doris Salcedo: Shibbo/eth, 109. 88. Sarah Lyall, "Caut ion: Art Afoot ," The New York Times, December 11, 2007, is one example in which grea t detail is placed on th e inter est in how the crevice was created and on people's enthusiasm for the Tate's lack of restri ctions on how close viewer s could get. The focus of the article was on those who tripped and feil into or beside the crack, and on th e wonder of con temporary art , th at a split in th e floor took one's eyes away from the walls and down to one's feet. This is but one of various arti cles with similar observations focusing less on the content of Salcedo's piece than on the marvel of its making. See also Richard Dorment, "Doris Salcedo: A Glimpse into th e Abyss," The Telegraph, October 9, 2007. 89. Salcedo, in discussion with the author, April 23, 2013. Salcedo discussed her int ention ality and gave Shibbole th as an exampl e of a work that did not achieve what she sought in its address to viewers.

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Organic and Ephemeral: Salcedo's Recent Material Challenges

Over the co urse of her career, Salcedo has concentrated on two principal concerns: sociopolltlc al issues (her work is abo ut civil violence) and materiality (her project focuses on making materlals speak). She has deliberat ely chosen sculpture as her means of addressing the conditlons of violence t hat rupture societies and wrench apart the lives of victims not only in Colombla but throughout t he wo rld . Her choi ce of medium , however, has been coupled with a certainty that she would not incorporate any narrat ive or figu rative image of a violent event or of the assaulted bod ies. lnstead , she presents a trace of the absent body and, with it , a suggestion of what has occu rred , creat ing affect t hrou gh her met iculously conceived and constructed sculptures and instal lations made of worn do mesti c furnishings and belongings. She has done this by engaging t he six aesth eti c str ateg ies di scussed at length in the preceding chapter: space to place, the uncanny and anth ropomorphi sm, materiality of surface, time as a material presence, body to scale, and di sjunction and disorientat ion. She relies on mat erials to impart emotional weight, andin her exhaustive process of planni ng and building each piece, she performs an act of remembrancefor th e unbur ied dead. Alt houg h her pol it ical statement is not always readily legible to the viewer, she doe s not hesita t e t o ta ke t his risk in an effort to convey her message through materiality . Salcedo's most recent pieces- A Flor de Pie/ (2012- 13), the Disremembered series (2014- 15), and the soo n to be realized Palimpses t (expect ed 2017) - embody the artist's two central prioriti es, political violence and mater ialit y, but in ways that test the known properties of materials. These works stake new gro und ; t hey push beyond her previous tactics, deliberately challenging the t empora l lim its of mat erials as weil as the definition of sculpture and the object. Although t he subj ect of her work - acknowl edging the unburied dead and survivors of political striferemains ce ntral to her pract ice, she continues to explore new means of articulating that loss. Wh ile Disremembered and Palimpsest make additional challenges through varied and unexpected means, A Flor de Pie/ is her most audacious and important work to date. This piece , composed of thou sands of rose pet als sewn t og ether in an enormous textile spreading across the floor ,

11 9

is founded in the political and the material, but it charts new territory with it s fragil e physica lit y. Salcedo challenges the delicate blossoms to endure in an untested state , th eir d eco m position arrested in a suspended but uncertain condition that tests the param et ers of o rga ni c materiality. She challenges these boundaries by deliberately blurring the line betw ee n th e phy sica l and the ephemeral , between sculpture and performance. A Flor de Pie/ step s beyond her pr evio us pieces by using fragile flora to create a material presence of the wounded fle sh of th e di sapp ea red victim, rather than by incorporating the body 's trace signified by a zipper or torn shirt. Alth oug h she continues to create each of her works to serve as witness to the experien ces of tho se who se loved ones were claimed by political violence, her artistic process is not static . By emph as izing the properties and possibilities of materials in the realization of her vision , she has str etc hed th e limits of the medium and has made a powerful express ion - one that both sums up her appro ac h and moves beyond it, raising more questions than answers . Salcedo 's approach - conjuring the imminence of violence not with blood -soaked imag es of it s effects , as rendered by Argentine artists such as Alberto Heredia or Graciela Sacco, bu t so lely through an evocative material presence - exemplifies the singular nature of her work . Link ed t o this proximity of violence, a sense of the absent body and the experience witne ssed find s m easure in the domestic furniture, the everyday objects and materials , the threads , hair s, wir es, and cement from which she constructs her pieces . Materials define her approach ; every choi ce, fr o m the wooden furniture to the stainless steel to the elements layered , melded , and fu sed in , o n, beneath , and between the works, is exactingly determined. In the diverse array of mat erials she employs , which range from the manufactured to the organic, how does she continu e to indi ca t e the local, the specific context of violence? Her career - long preoccupation cent ers on th e act and space of mourning, on the remembrance of the unburied dead and the memories that th reat en to disappear without acknowledgment. Each work by the artist takes public me asur e of what political violence has wrought on minds and bodies . Salcedo's project deliberately avoids the use of images that recall parti cular event s or victims, unlike fellow Colombian artists such as Oscar Mufioz , whose practice dwell s on the faces of civil war. She takes on the war by conceiving pieces that she believes will oppose the power that violence wields in society. 1 The more than 50 years of unrest that has plagued Colombia - a span of time that has seen the emergence of leftist guerrilla groups; the growth, accumulated wealth, and influence of narco-traffickers; increased power of the military and of the state; and the rise of paramilitary forces - amounts to a persistent condition of civil violence that has become habitual and is viewed as an element of national identity. For Salcedo, the imminence of violen ce , not it s figurative elaboration, dwells in the meticulous interweaving of materials such as found furniture , cement, and organic elements. She explains that by purposefully combining particular mat erials (the used kitchen chair, the torn shirt, the long wooden tables, the soil) , she inserts elem ent s that the viewer will recognize, thus allowing an accessibility to the piece that a vivid image of a bloody corpse would eclipse . She describes depictions of violent acts and murdered bodie s as "hyper representation. " They reveal all, leaving no space to absorb and consider the experienc e and it s lingering consequences; they convey spectacle rather than the violation, enduring grief , and resounding absence that fills the survivors' lives. Salcedo seeks to convey the memory of th e experience of civil war, which the viewer realizes upon deliberate contemplation of her pie ces. The latency of violence is legible after careful study; only then does one discover the embedded bone fragments or the woven hairs. Moreover, because Salcedo does not portray specific violent event s or reference particular victims , she instead conjures up a fragmentary, multilayered te xtile of the histories shared with her over time by countless victims. She draws together thes e vari ous threads into a perspective on violence and the ongoing mourning. Her furniture sculptur es embody acts that fix the memory of the experiences of civil war in a material pre sence - th ey are acts of mourning through an address that is at once familiar and strange. Within the context of Colombia 's civil war , of relentless, random political violence ov er many years, Salcedo has chosen a means of giving voice and measure to the horror , grief, and

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absence through everyday objects and materials that she has either been given or found, to evoke the traces of victims . Her work dwells on the victim 's memory of the experience of violence and captur ing that memory before it vanishes. Built from almost obsessively repeated actions of suturing, stitching, patching, and fi lling , her pieces seek to make the memory present. Evidence of the artist's hand in the creat ion of each piece is important, although often difficult to discem without close scrutiny of the works and the surface she meticulously builds. With time, shehas cho sen increasingly delicate and ep hemeral materials to render the trace of the absent body, exp ressing the fragile threads of the victims ' past through similarly impermanent materlals. A Flor de Pie/ (Fig. 1) allows the ephemeral, the temporality of mind and material, to endure. This breakthrough work distills Salcedo 's visual and political priorities in a statement of startllng mater iality that stradd les the line between genres . lt challenges the artist's own attempts to make tangib le the effects of trauma and the transparent guises used to mask it. Throughout her career, Salcedo has conceived scu lpt ures based on the experiences and memories that survivors share, then created works as an expressio n of the private mourning that they, their families, and thelr loved ones bear. The image she envisions and the process she undertakes to build each piece are her gestures toward t hese individual s, who represent the loss faced by many. Salcedo developed the idea for A Flor de Pie/ following a similar process, but she chose the most fragile material yet emp loyed in her practice - rose petals -a nd devised a way to force this fugitive matter to remaln in a suspended state, neither dead nor alive, fresh nor withered. Salcedo conceived A Flor de Pie/ as a flower offering to a nurse who was kidnapped and tortured ; it is the funerary ritual that she was denied. Thousands upon thousands of deep red rose peta ls were sewn by hand , creating a delicate textile of soft , veined petals sutured together in an expanse that exceeds 17 by 15 feet . A Flor de Pie/ fills a room . lt spreads over the floor, gathered in fo lds like a heavy sheet, the flowers sealed within a transparent coating that allows the veins, petal edges, and st it ches to mark the surface like creases, freckles, and scars on a body. Recalling skin, the piece bunches and stretches, the surface delicate but semi-elastic; and like flesh, it reveals some of wh at lies underneath. This ephemeral work, with its color of drled blood and it s veined petals visibly sutured together as if closing a deep cut, is the wound made mater ial. Salcedo has created the tortured woman 's wound as a shroud, evoking her absentbody within and beneat h the covering. lts weight , scale, and blood-stained surface project a pregnant silence, as if t his is both the live skin and the rumpled sheet that covered the nurse'sbodyand so many bodies before hers. One long s to kneel and touch, and yet shrink from, the evocatlve, improbab le membrane that constitutes th is piece. A Flor de Pie/ co me s as close to realizing the skin, the presence of the victims,as any work that Salcedo has conceived. And the impossibility of bringing back the dead is mirrored by the unlik ely, improb ab le feat of sewing together thousands of rose petals and maintaining them in this suspended stat e. Science and logic teil us that this quilt of roses cannot last, that this piece will perform as the absent body made flesh for but a briet period; it will then d isintegrate and dis appear, like a corpse. In this work , Salcedo makes vividly reachable every victim w hose torture and absence she has marked , but she does so by creating an act of remember ing, not a permanent memorial. This is not sculpture, this is materiality at its most ephemeral; and Salcedo's ac hievement is creating that physical presence in its convincing, seemi ngly im permanent state . The importa nce of A Flor de Pie/ w ith in Salcedo 's oeuvre lies not only in the vivid means and int ensity of her statement regarding political violence, but in the technical risks and the challenge she faced by forc ing ep hemera l materials to endure. She endeavored to make this work lasting in spite of the delicate nature of its organic elements, never knowing how the petals would fare beyond the present moment. From the beginning, the installation site factored into her conception : the work was meant to fill but be contained within a space with walls, the floor and ceiling framing it , allow ing a focused perspective on the sutured, blood - red petals. The artist worked over many months with scient ists to formulate a process by which the rose petals could maintain their co lor and form so that they could be sewn and spread as a fragile textile within such a space, with enough elast icity for t he flowers to bend and gather into folds.

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Fig. la and lb - c (fo llowing pages) A Flor de Pie/ (det ails), 2013. Rose petal s and thr ea d, 34 0 x 500 c rn (133 1/ex 196 1/, in.) (dirnensio ns variable). Harvard Art Museurns/ Fogg Mu seum , Gift of Mr. G. David Thornpson, in rnernory o f hi s so n, G. David Thornp so n, Jr., Class of 1958, by exc hang e; purchase thr o ugh th e generosi ty o f Elaine Levin in honor of Mary Sc hneid er Enriquez; and purchase through th e gen ero sity of Deborah and Martin Haie, 2014.133 .

The process of stitching the rose petals required the help of numerous assistants work ing count less hours with infinite care. The effort necessitated slow, laborious, repeated actions reminiscent of the exacting work undertaken to produce antique tapestries. Without sut urin g it by hand, Salcedo 's rose petal textile could not have been made , and the impli cat ion of this labor-intensive process, essential to the object's creation, lends further weight to it s aesthetic and political statement. Like most of her works , A Flor de Pie/ was created through a series of steps necessitat ing the help of skilled manual labor by numerous assistant s, and the demanding process is revealed to the viewer upon close examination of the object 's surface. Salcedo chose a process suited to the realities of her nation, where hand-wrought work is a st ap le part of the culture and help is abundant and affordable. 2 Salcedo created the first and second versions of A Flor de Pie/ in 2012. In the third version, made in 2013, she used petroleum, glycerin, collagen, and waxes to preserve the flower s. In addition, a fl exible membrane composed of biofilm was sewn beneath the st itch ed quilt of pet als to provide a stable backing. 3 The combination of hand - stitching flowers and the formu lation of a chemical process to preserve that manual labor epitomizes the singul arity of Salce do 's practice; the demanding method of creating by hand, the focus on the qualities of chosen m aterial s, and the application of research to frame and fi x a creation are all typical of her proces s. Her work , on one level, demonstrates the dichotomy that characterizes her country: the extrem es of historically driven, political violence and the continuing quality and skill of production using both hand labor and cutting-edge technology. The rose resonates for Salcedo on various levels. She chose a material connected to the ritu al of honoring the dead, the flowers placed on the grave or given to the surviving loved ones, symbolizing the remembrance of the deceased with a vivid , momentary gathering of fr esh blo ssoms. Beyond this broader association, the rose has particular significance in Colombia: it is one of the country's principal exports and, as such, is important to the national economy . lt is also the flower she and a group of fellow artists hung in sorrow along the wall surrounding the harne of hum orist Jaime Garzon after his assassination during the drug wars in Augu st 1999. They placed 5,000 red roses along the 150- meter wall as a public gesture of homage , in what Salcedo describ ed as "an ephemeral site of memory." • A Flor de Pie/, conceived for an enclosed, indoor space, sugg ests a memorial as weil ; framed by the walls and the ceiling, the quilt of stitched, blood - red pet als appears uncanny, like a skin rumpled in folds, as if shrouding the victim's body beneath it s spread. Hence, the artist chose that which signifies an act of im permanent memorial and mourn ing , but sought to make the gesture one that defies the flower 's natural properties and the ritu als associated with it. She challenges the medium by literally gathering the ephemeral, suturing it together into a membrane that, without the intervention of science, could not endure. As it is, the longevity of the shroud's hue, suppleness, and scale remains uncertain. A Flor de Pie/ is, in a sense, a performative piece; it exists as an act of remembrance that may wither , leaving only the scar from the wound she made flesh . Salcedo took that risk in her pursuit to make material s, rather than pictorialization, convey her address on political violence. At each step of her trajectory , she has sought out challenging sites, materials, and issues, many of them nearly impossible t o resolve te chnically or aesthetically; and this artistic approach imparts the struggle of existen ce within a world burdened by civil war. She uses materiality to express what cannot be said or what often has not been acknowledged in the public sphere . Salcedo's remembrance of the unburied dead and re-creation of the site of mourning have grown from the use of warn domestic furniture and objects interwoven with tra ces of the victim s to increasingly ephemeral and performative expressions. The performance installation Noviembre 6 y 7 and the works Shibboleth, Plegaria Muda, and A Flor de Pie/ are pieces that change with tim e, like the memories and sorrow experienced by survivors, which evolve over the passage of week s and years. In Noviembre 6 y 7, the chairs descended until a !arge collection of them covered the sides of the Palace of Justice at the conclusion of the performance . The fissure that sp lit the vast expanse of the cement floor of the Tate Modern 's Turbine Hall and that defined Shibbol eth was filled upon the show's closure, leaving a discolored scar across the conc ret e comparab le to a sutured wound . In Plegaria Muda, the grass continuously grew and had to be cut as it slowly

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alt e red the appearance of the tables. Finally, the rose petals in A Flor de Pie/ could changeIn co lor, t ext ure, and shape as time passes, thus affecting the structure, materiality, and natureof Salcedo's expression. As th e titl e suggests in Spanish (there is no direct English translation that captures the nuance), this last piece has become and is in the process of becoming: somethlng is abou t to appear, to happen ; it is imminent. The rose petals' delicateness imparts the fragilityof the wound and the possibility of its disintegration , despite the scientific processes that Salcedo und ertook to preserve the membrane of deep red petals in a suspended state. This potent ial for physical change in the shroud exemplifies her statement of presenting but denying the chance for one to touch the suggestion of the victim's tortured body. The materiallty of the delicate textile conjures a presence beneath the folds. But it is in fact an absence; nothlng is there, and the langu age of materials both realizes the wounded victim and the impermanence of th e means conveying this loss. lt is the impossibility of securing the presence of the absent body and the skin of petals in a lasting physical state that confounds the viewer, and defines the success of this work. A Flor de Pie/ gro ws from Salcedo's previous pieces, testing not only the limits of matert• als, but her capacit y to co nvey under these constraints the hidden wounds wrought by politic al violence. lt challenges everything she has done before. The work defies the lines separating one genre from another and reflects on the visual proposals and notions of sculpture and materiallty that she has exp lor ed over the last 25 years by projecting a bold, palpable reaiization of what cannot be expressed. Therein lies its success, both on its own and within the context of her oeuvre. She forces a delicate, short-lived material to undergo radical measures and to endure. The piece embodies tim e as a mat erial presence; it is the moment just before the decay begins, simllar to the vanitas tradition in Dutch still - life paintings, in which mortality is suggested through the rendering of a bountiful array of fruit, vegetables, and game on the cusp of spoiling. 5 The fact that the fr ag ile blossoms have not decomposed suggests that time has stopped; however, the possibi lity that the rose petals will dry and disintegrate remains, making this piece a momentary expression that , unlike a temporary installation , Salcedo deliberately sought to preserve,but who se per manen ce cannot be assured. The skin of roses therefore appears as an ephemeral mat eriality - not quite an object, but a work that acts as a performative expression of the absent body, almost within reach , but ultimately impossible to touch in its impermanent state. In Oisremembered (Figs. 2- 4), Salcedo continues her pursuit of a materiality that is all but fleeting . Like A Flor de Pie/, the sculptures in this series seem tobe just on the verge of disappearing, althou gh these works are not constructed of organic materials. Each is a seemingly fragile, spec ter - like form of human scale that appears to float against the wall. Upon close scrutiny, one realizes that the delicate form is anything but gentle- it is a garment composed of pale silk thr eads pierced by tiny, blackened needles. Salcedo created a finely made, beautiful but menacing blouse , a lit eral hair-shirt that suggests and creates pain. She conceived this sculpture as a nearly immaterial , ghostly presence, to convey the lingering traces of victims that feature in mourning. The idea for th e Disremembered series developed from the artist's interviews with mothers who lost their children to gun violence in Chicago housing projects. Salcedo found their accounts so pa inful that she dec ided she needed to more fully comprehend their suffering. When she retu rned to Bogota , she spent seven months in a morgue studying the files of deceased children, and forced herself to draw portraits of the young victims so that she could better understand the testimonies of these women .6 Salcedo based the form of the sculptures on that of her own blouse. Each work in the series is handwoven, sect ion by section, with individual raw silk threads marked by more than 12,000 tiny, blackened needle s interspersed in a deliberate, irregular pattern. They are beading needles, and them selves are as fine as threads . Each is burnished and cut by hand before it is inserted betwee n the threads. When shown , the blouse hangs on the wall from a hidden support; the fold s and edges of the garment reveal jutting black points that are indiscernible as needles until one closely views the work. From a distance , the sculpture appears spectral, but as one draws near, the form takes shape as a delicate materiality that subtly catches the light and casts a soft

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Fig. 2 Disremembered /, II, and II/. Installation view at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2015.

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. h k the more one . d Shadow As with Salcedo's other sculptures, the langer one closely stud1es t e wor , 1 · . b · registers the details and delicacy of the surface and construct1on , the la onous pr oce ss enta1 e to make the blouse, and the impossible manner in which it seems to hang without su~port. I Y th at 1s at once . In Disremembered, Salcedo has created an absent body with a matena· 1·t nearly intangible - a fine trace of threads - and a vivid, physical presen ce, whose black line~ can prick and draw blood . Like A Flor de Pie/, this blouse is a laboriously handmad e ge st ure 0 mourning. Sa\cedo has once again conceived a work that challenges the properti es of matenal s and the nature of the object, defying expectations. Disremembered hangs barely vi sibl e unless . . tho se of the v1 ·ct1ms · hke w hos e one draws close; it is a presence composed of traces that hnger, mothers will continue to mourn. As Salcedo explains, people expect these mother s to overcome their mourning and to go on and live anormal life, but this is not possible; the grief does not pass. "lt's a condition," she says, "it is who they are." 7 • Salcedo's most recent work , Palimpsest(Fig. 5), again takes her material challenges to the point of ephemerality. Still in process at the time of this book's publication , the piece, like Disremembered, was first inspired by her interviews with the mothers in Chicago . A palimpsest is a piece of wnting that has been effaced or altered but still bears visible traces of the original te xt, and Salcedo 's work echoes this evocative layering and all that it implies. The work consists of an enormous rectangular ground that the viewer may walk upon, its beige, sand-like surface faintly incised with the names of the deceased. As originally conceived, Palimpsest was to present the names of young victim s of gun violence. Since its initial formation , however, Salcedo has changed the work to refle ct the names of migrants and retugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean while tleeing conflict in their home countries-a tribute that will carry particular weight when shown in an upcoming exhibition in Europe. Water slowly emerges from beneath the sculpture, spelling out names ot additional victims , then gradually dries and vanishes. This is the tirst Salcedo piece to include text and spec iti c nam es, although they are literally and tiguratively presented in a fluid state, appearing then disappearing like the spirit of each deceased victim. When one realizes that the names are those ot migrants wh o have died , the weight of recognition sharply heightens the viewer 's awareness of the enduring griet ot the surviving loved ones. In this sculpture, the repeated cycle ot water that emerges to spell out the names but then seeps away evokes the cycle ot lite and, more harrowingly, the relentl ess cycle ot violence that claims one set of victims, whose names are only to be erased trom the co llective consciousness as the names of new victims take their place. lt also resembles a kind ot liturgi cal recitation, a ritual prayer that brings comfort through its hushed repetition. In Palimpsest, Salcedo again chose an organic material to convey the pain lett in the w ake ot violence . Like the grass in P/egaria Muda and rose petals in A Flor de Pie/, water is a temporal element that creates an evocative and unexpected surface in a sculpture. Within the traj ector y of Salcedo's practice, water is her latest means of creating a materiality that both verges on disappearing and blurs the line between sculpture and pertormance . lndeed , it is her most ephemeral n:iaterial to ~ate. In this work , chemical elements added to the water change it s physi cal prop ert1es so that _1t e_lude s the v1ewer's tauch . Moreover , it retlects light and projects a visco sity that resembles liquid mercury. Palimpsest is thus both a tixed work and one that changes with tim e, displaying a materiality that is alternately present then absent, like the wounds wrought by political v1olence and the memories that linger, never tul\y healed or torgotten . Salcedo's legacy centers on _political violence, and her address - the visual weight , scope, and challenge she poses by working w1th materials both ephemeral and solid - deties th e lin es k t· d t t between genres. What she creates is like a skin as her latest . . , wor s con inue to emons ra e. t· • • · Through th1s skin, she evokes the presence ot the victims . . , crea ing a memonal ot qu1et but t1erce th b matenahty . lt conveys what cannot be said or seen· the t . . . • race, e a sence , and the memory that , In the words ot Paul Celan fs • endures, known but 1nv1s1ble. , one o a1cedo s favonte poets: A strange lostne ss was palpably present, almost you would have lived. 8

Fig. 5

Palimpsest (delail), 2 01 3 - 17. Waier, sa nd, c ru sh ed marble , re sin, and metal , dim ension s va ri able. Col leclion of the artist.

)oris Salcedo, "Arti sTalk," lecture at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., April 23, 2013 . rhe need to employ numero us assistants to bu ild the piece, using the traditional skill of hand sew ing , raise s a series of qu esti ons lting to the art ist's wo rk as a memoria l to th e anonymou s victims-those largely ignored and on the margin s of soc iety - as one lt by the labors of many helping hands. At no tim e does Salcedo suggest tha t she constructs her pieces alone . From th e co nst ruc 1 of her cemenHilled furnitur e, whose weight and scale make th em impossible for her to build without help , to the assem blage ables with soil between them , to the tedious sewing of flower peta ls, assistants have been essential to th e creation of her pieces ·r the last 15 years or more. This work happen s largely within her studio in Bogota , where hiring the number of people necessa ry 1ore economical ly feasible than it would be in major metr opo litan areas in the Unit ed States and Europ e. Thal said, it is worth ing that she creates pieces that address tho se forgotten by society by relying on many assistants, mo st of whom are architects, 11n eers, and artists by training . Salcedo's awareness of politi cal vio lence stems fr om her experience living in Colombia, and her nplex working process is possible because she lives in a cultur e in which workers are plentiful and affordable. )oris Salcedo, in discussion with th e author, Ap ril 23, 2013, and Jun e 25, 2013. Carolyn Alexander , in an emai l to th e author from Jte".'ber 7, 2013, also explained the worki ng process entai led in preserving the softn ess and co lor of the sew n rase petals: " l st ge: 1mmer s1onin a petro leum solution with a hint of pigm ent for 20 days in dark area. 2nd stage: pressed between two sheets :ardboard with silicon added whi ch gradually replaces th e petroleum. 10- 15 days. Press used. 3rd stag e: petals are taken to a :ond press. Glycerine, collagen and wate r based pigment s added . 20 days. 4th stage: Each petal goes through sealing pro cess 19 3 types of waxes." :a rios Basualdo, "Carlos Basualdo in Conversation with Doris Salcedo," in Doris Salcedo, ed. Nancy Princen thal, Car los Basualdo, J Andreas Huyssen (London: Phaidon Press, 2000), 33. Mar_th a Buskirk.' The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), 149. Dons Salcedo, in phone co nversation with the author September 21 2015. ' ' lbid. Paul Celan, "Dumb Autumn Smells," in Poems of Paul Cefan, tran s. Michael Hamburger (New York: Persea Bocks. 1972) . 149.

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The impor t ance of Doris Salcedo's work lies not only in her remarkable skills as a sculptor, but also in t he sociopo litica l t hemes th at she addresses andin the challenges that she poses to material ity and to t he viewer, whom she dares to study her evocative works deeply and thoughtfully. At the t ime of thi s writ ing, the continuing crisis of civil violence; the widespread displacement of tho usands of peopl e fl eeing conflict; the persistent attacks targeting public places such as schools, parks, and theaters; and the alienat ion and economic disparity dividing communities around the world has lent furt her poignancy to Salcedo's project. Art will not solve theseproblems; however, it can make a st at ement and create a space where , as Salcedo herself hasremarked,lt "can inscribe in our life a different kind of passage, that is from suffering to signifying loss."1 Art can help us acknowledge and learn from the injustice that has occurred and is occurring in this world - work th at must be done if we are to move forward for the sake of humankind. In addition to her commit ment to tackling some of the most pressing sociopolitical concerns of our t ime, t he weight of which she comes to understand personally through extensiveinterviews with t he vict ims, my keen int erest in Salcedo's work stems from her ability to create piecesof remarkable aesth etic compl exity th at address these issues with quiet but forceful physicality. She stretches the capacities of mate rials, constructing a materiality that is difficult to comprehend and at times seems impossible: t he sutured rose petals that don't wither, the cement-filled furniture, the crum pled stee l chairs- th ese pieces unnerve and compel the viewer to confront the immensity of the injust ice that has transpired. There is nothing easy or readily accessible about her sculpt ure. They are diffi cult works , but from early on, 1was certain that Salcedo's project matters im mensely, because she pushes the medium , she pushes the art of handwork, she pushesthe accepted defi nition of th e space t hat a sculpture should or even could inhabit, and she pushes the mea ns by w hich a powerful sociopolitical statement can be expressed. Salcedo also reimagi nes th e way in which we mark remembrance. Her sculpturesare not memorials - stat ic, heroic monuments situated in a public site; articulated in the traditional

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materials ot stone, marble, or steel; impervious to climate. lnstead, she takes material s that are recognizable as part ot the everyday, touched by human hands or teet, such as turniture and cement, but transforms them in such a way that the resulting visual ettect in spires one to pause , remember, and mourn the absence ot those taken trom this lite. She creates objects and in sta llations that are at once tamiliar and hauntingly changed. Rather than build a statue ot a leader, martyr, or victim whom we acknowledge as a specitic participant in the violence , she creates a sculpture that conjures associations and provides a space for contemplating what and who was lost. Salcedo's memorial is a work in mourning; it is sculpture that, as the artist has said , "attempts to give back the sense, meaning, and form that violence took away trom its vi ct ims, the unmourned dead ot the past." 2 Consequently, her works spark ditfering thoughts, associa tions , and emotions in each viewer, turning the traditional idea ot the memorial on its head. No individual names are given nor specitic histories cited, 3 and her titles often reterence historical or literary sources rather than contemporary events; but her works unequivoca\\y address the need to mark the societal lass wrought by violence . lt is up to the viewer to take the time to look closely, contront, and ponder what she has created. In Salcedo's words, "I hope that my work can cross through history to make present the extreme experiences that lay forgotten in the past ."4 Monumentality is conveyed in Salcedo's work not only through the \arge scale ot many ot her sculptures and public installations (see Fig. 1), but in the enormous etfort ot the labor she undertakes to make her art by hand andin the materiality that results (Fig. 2). While many contem porary artists employ fragile and/or everyday materials in their work, Salcedo has chosen to focus on materials both unexpected and especia\\y complicated to manipulate, form, and preserve in

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1cedO ri s sa 1eft : Fig. 1 . ieW a l O0 . tur ed n \n st all at 1o n v . 2008- p,c woode Ate li er, Bogot~ooden tabl~~el, 78; et e and s 47'/• in•. Untitl ed, 2008. . • y. x in• 0 nc r armoires, c 30' /• x 97 • a 5pa n x 121 cm ( . JV1u se0 .',,00 de 247 0 te, h im 81\ba 08- v, Guggen e . Unti 1/ed, 2 0 co ncre ;. Pictur ed nght. ,-,oires, rri (30 den an c ·on, s x 172 ·5 118 t ab l e, woo ct 1 76 x 268 · eo and st ee 1• . ) private 105 '/• X 68 1n.. London .

Fig. 2 Untitl ed 200 slee l, 106 7 4 - 5. Ca rved sta in less 15 in.) H . x 4 0.Gx38 .l c m (42x 16x M use um . aG'f rv a rd A rl Mu se um s/Fogg Cow les, by ' e1 t ho f M r. and Mr s. John xc ange, 2010.573.

pe,p etuity. Fmm her eady use of cement, wood, aod stainless steel with indusloos offabcicand hai es,to her decision in recent yeacsto coostwct works with soil aod gcass or thousands ofsutured rose petal s, to her latest challenge - the mutab;I ity of water - she has tested the possibilitie of mat erials. Time aod ,gain she creates a materialitY that defies expectatioos. Her most recen: wo rks, including those presented in the Harsard Art Museums' special exhibition, experiment with th e physica l lifespan and ,isual qualities of organic materials , and demonstrate Salcedo's ability

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to tran sfer this materiality from the immen se solid pre sence see n in her f urniture work s, to the vivid yet hauntingly evocative rase petal shraud , t o th e et herea l, specter- like needl e shirt s that seem to float over the wall. Her desire to mak e visible tho se lost to civil vio lence fuels her c hoi ce of material challenges. "An aesthetic vi ew of death reveals an et hica l vi ew of life ," Salcedo has said , "and it is for thi s reason that there is nothing more hum an th an m o urning. " 5 Salcedo's work sharply resonate s within the Harvard Art Mu seum s fo r a var iety of reaso ns: she is one of the leading contemporary sculptor s, and th e institu t io n's sc ul pture co llection dem onstr ate s a depth and breadth that pravides a pow erful and imp o rt ant co nt ext for understanding and situating her practice within the tradition of th e m edium and wi thi n our specific mission as a t eaching museum. In addition , the researc h and experti se of co nservators and conservation scienti st s in the museums' Straus Center for Con servation and Tec hn ica l Studies support the criti cal work of learning how to preserve and care for co nt empo rary art made w ith ephemeral materials . Given the delicate and extraordinary materiality th at Salce do creat es, th e museums, and particula rly the Strau s Center , are exactly where thi s essent ial conse rvatio n researc h can a nd should oc cur. Salcedo is not alone in her use of org anic and fr agil e m at erials, and t he museums and the fi eld as a whole mu st continue to imprav e on th e best m eans of cari ng for her art a nd th e work of her peers. In our colle ction is A Flor de Pie/, Salce do's ra om -s ized tapestry of sutured rase petals , a monumental work in scale , labor , and visual pr esence . Resea rc hing and learning from th e artist about its construction and th e optimal mann er by whi ch to p rat ect and preserve it for years to com e is a priority for the Harvard Art Mu seum s - and on e that sta nd s to have a lasting and far-reaching impact on the fi eld .

1 · Doris Salcedo , "ArtisTalk,""lecture at Harvard University Cambridge Mass April 23 2013. 2. lbid . ' ' ., ' 3: As prev iously menti oned, Salcedo's newest werk, Palimpsest, is an excep ti on, as it presents the name s of victims that appear, d1sappear,then reappear. 4 · _Doris Salcedo , "Palimp sest ," in Doris Sa/cedo, ed . Ju lie Rodrigu es Widh olm and Madeleine Gryn szt ejn (Chicago: Unive rsity of Chicago Press; Museum of Contempo rary Art, 2015), 217. 5. lb1d., 2 15 .

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lnherent Vice and the Ship of Theseus Narayan Khandekar

Doris Salce do very deliberately chooses specific media for her works to signify the suffering and loss ca used by political violence .1 The extensive labor and meticulous attention to detail involved in the preparation of her art serves as a dedication to the memory of the disappeared, the deceased, and the survivor s who mourn them. 2 Her works derive intensity from their strong and we ll- planned physical presence; and her sophisticated application of materials inspires co nservato rs to carefully analyze the physical manifestations of her art in order to determine the best direct ion in ca ring for the objects . In particular, the ephemeral nature of many of Salcedo's materia ls poses challenges, not unlike those presented by other works of modern and contemporary art made from nontraditional materials . Due to the obso lesce nce of materials commonly used by artists in the mid-20th century (e.g., electro nic devices , light bulbs, and other utilitarian objects with a finite manufacturing or shelf lif e), co nservators are faced with material elements that fail or disintegrate over time, and for whi ch rep laceme nt s might not be available in the future. Works of art with these kinds of materia ls have an inherent vice that must be dealt with at some point during an object's lifetime, leading conservators to contemplat e how much of an object can be replaced - either with identical or compa rable parts - befor e it is no longer the original. 1sa Dan Flavin light bulb replaceable? How do we swap out a Nam June Paik television screen? Since Spalding no longer makes Dr. J basketba lls, what happens to Jeff Koons's equilibrium sculptures when the existing stockpiles run out? What does it mean for Salcedo's A Flor de Pie/ it new rose petals are substituted for damaged and deteriorated ones? Co nservators and technical art historians are concerned about the physical nature of a work, taking great pains to ensure that an artist's intentions (as far as they can be established) are hon ored .3 This is critical when preserving and restoring works so as not to overstep the et hical boundar ies ot the conser vatio n protession , and traditionally it calls for the preservation ot as much or iginal material as possible. 4 However, particularly within the tield of modern and

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contemporary art, where new conservation treatments are being established, this has sometimes been complicated. There have been well - reported cases, such as th e co ntrov ers ial restoration of works by Donald Judd and Barnett Newman , in which the per ce ived co ncept of the art wa s deemed more important than the artist's hand, resulting in a mi sinformed treatment. 5 Strik ing a balan ce between honoring the artist 's original concept and being mindful of the aging eff ects of unt ested , new materials is key to our work as conservators. 6 We ca n learn much from speaking with artist s and th ei r assistants to hear abo ut a work's construction and material cond ition s.7 Salcedo herself works closely with the assistants in her st udio not only to transform her ideas into final form, but to anticipate and plan for any probl ems that may arise in the future. Now that her career has spanned severa l decades , her work s hav e had time to age, and many issues inherent to her complicated assemblages have surfaced . Her works are constructed with painstaking care, and their delic ate nature raises questions about physica l well-being over time . In addition to providing a means with whi c h to emot iona lly process the trauma of political violence , her fastidiousness plays an important part in extend ing the lifespan of her work . Precise planning is at the center of all the art she sets out to create, helping avoid or minimi ze future deterioration . Salcedo's concrete-fi lled furniture works, for examp le, have developed fine cracks that are not ideal , but are considered tolerable by the artist. In anticipation of th ese inevitab le cracks, she embedded metal structures during construction that hold the wood and co ncret e together, and thus minimize the damage. Furth ermore, sma ll pieces of concrete have brok en off through hand ling , and Salcedo had these losses restored (Fig. 1).8 Other fragile work s, suc h as Unl and : The Orphan's Tunic, contain precisely strung strands of human hair (Fig. 2). Thi s work must be maintained in ca reful climate contro l, as hair stretches and shrinks when the humidity changes (whi ch is why hair is used in thermo-hygrographs, devices that measure temperature and humidity) . Th e hair has not yet needed to be replaced , but in preparation for the inevitabl e damage , conservators must consu lt published literature on the degradation of hum an hair, most of which comes from the field of archaeologica l conservation and is inadequate or inappropri ate for contemporary art. 9 Certa in components of other works by Salcedo have simil ar issues with humidity ; th e par c hm ent in Atrabiliarios, fo r examp le, can be vulnerable to shrinking and stretching or m icrobi al growth if not cared for correctly. While the preservation of parchment is weil understood from the point of view of manuscripts, the way that Salcedo sutures it to the wall co uld pot enti ally lead to the formation of stress wrinkles and other, unexpected co nsequen ces of flu ctuat ing humidi ty, alt hough this has not yet happened . Perhaps th e bigge st challenge for a collecting or exhibiting institution is in decid ing wh ether or not to replace or remake a work. The fir st ver sion of Atrabiliarios , installed at th e Inst itu te of Contemporary Art in Boston , contained shoes lent by the famil ies of tho se who had been d isa ppeared. When that work was de-instal led, the shoes were returned to the families, with the very serious imp licat ion that this particular piece was a one -time insta llat ion . How ever, sub seque nt version s incorporated store-bought shoes, and the power of the insta llation has rema ined even without an actua l relic .10 None of the shoes have needed tobe repla ced since, and the fact that they do not carry th eir own history make s potential replacement an easier decision - which in turn raises the que stion : when does one cross the lin e into creating a reprodu ct ion , if such a lin e exists? For the Salcedo retrospective in 2015, a number of her work s were partially remade. 11 The stac ks of white shirts featured in a work from 1989 -9 0 were all new, as the originals were no longer of a uniform appearance and Salcedo deemed them unaccept able (Fig. 3). Th e bed frames also had tobe remade for the exhib ition, as the cost of storage wa s prohibitive to t he arti st and the ones from the 1989-90 original had been discarde d. We also know that some of t he petals from A Flor de Pie/ had tobe repla ced when a young boy ran over the piece while it was on view in Chicago and damaged it. As with the ship of Theseus, repaired piece by piece until non e of its original components remained , replacing elements of a work of art for ces us to ask what constitutes "an original." The issue has long concerned conservators and co llecto rs alik e; ju st rece ntly, in a New Yorker art icle abo ut challenges faced by conservators at th e Whitn ey Mu seum, cr itic Ben Lerner asked, "Once you start repli cating parts , wh en is th e work no longer the work ?" 12

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The decision-making process is further complicated by the timing of the restoration: when an artist is sti ll alive, she and her studio are able to effect the repairs; however, after an artlst has died , the process becomes thorny, with a chorus of voices-the artist's estate, the ownerof the pie ce, curators, conservators, critics, and other professionals- providing different, sometimes confli cting , perspectives . This dynamic is currently playing out at the Guggenheim Museum, where a comm itt ee has embarked on the extensive process of researching, preserving, and presenting t o the public th e Panza Collection (acquired from the ltalian collector Giuseppe Panzadl Biumo), with proper attention paid to historical context, material integrity, and artistic intentlon. The webpage of the Panza Collection Initiative describes the challenges related to the long-term sustainability of variable, ephemeral, or fabrication-based artworks of the 1960s and '70s: In place of existi ng conventions regarding medium and craft, artists came to substitute industria l materials for traditional ones and delegated fabrication to others. In some cases, the "object" was abandoned altogether in favor of diagrams and texts, instructions for events or projects, and proposed or imagined works. The ramifications were profound: an artwork was no langer necessarily crafted by the artist or givena fixed, per manent form. lt co uld be executed by other hands and reconstituted or re-adapted to different spaces and circumstances, or it could exist solely in the form of a plan,to be produced at a later date .13 Every decision about the works is now made collectively by a committee of art historians,conservators , scie nti sts, and archivists. Salcedo's stu dio strives to ensure that a work of art is as stable as possible, delaying the need to co nsider whether or how to rep lace components. Despite the illusion of instabilityin many of her works, she and her assistants carefully assess the tension between presentdisplay and future preservation . Large volumes of concrete poured inside wooden furniture immedlately raises co ncerns about the cracking of the concrete and its effect on the wood; but as prevlously ment ion ed, Salcedo's studio planned for these effects, inserting sub-frames inside the objects to en hance their internal strength. Similar ly, plaster-coated shirts pierced by an iron spikeralse concerns about the fragility of the thin , set plaster and any corrosive reaction that may occur between the gored shirts and the iron of the spike. To avoid any reaction, staining, or oxidatlon between the plaster, the shirts, and the metal, Salcedo coated the iron spike, again demonstrating just how cr ucial planning is to the execution of her works .14 The shirts did ultimately haveto be rep laced in 2013, but because the artist is alive and could oversee the new installation, her vision was ab le to override the originality of the components, although this of course will not always be the case. Signif icant research is carried out by Salcedo's assistants for some of the more complex inst allations . On fir st inspection , it would seem that the construction of Plegaria Muda(Fig.4) ls fraught with inherent vice: soil is sandwiched between wooden tables, and blades of grassgrow through holes in the inverted upper table. The presence of green grass and soil immediately impli es that water is present, and anyone who has encountered an old wooden stakeplacedin wet ground knows that water and wood do not coexist comfortably. Each table is unique-as individual as a person-which means each table is crucial to the work and not easily replaced. This sets up a tension for the viewer , who wonders how the work was made and how long lt can possibly last. Like many of the artist's works, Plegaria Muda turns a seemingly impossible idea into real ity. Salcedo and her assistants analyzed every variable. The soil in which the grass grows is sealed inside a co mpartment within the interior of the piece, so that water never comes in contact with the wood . The grass seeds are placed three deep in a tray, and the blades grow upward through holes drilled in the upturned table toward an overhead light. The soil around the edge is refreshed by steam-c leaning before every exhibition, positioned and set in place like concrete. 15 The grass is maintained for each exhibition by a person trained to water it and keep each blade trimmed to a specific height , determined by Salcedo herself in accordance with the measurements of the lateral planks of each table .16

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Fig. 1 Untitled, 1998. Wood, cement, and metal, 124.5 x 208.3 x 88.3 cm (49 x 82 x 34¾ in.). Na t iona l Gallery o f Canada, Ottawa, Pu rchased 1999, 40066.

Fig. 2 Unland: The Orphan's Tunic (detail) , 1997. Wooclen table , si lk, hurnan hair, and thr ead, 80 x 245 x 98 c rn (31.5 x 96.5 x 38. in .). "la Ca ixa" Co nt empora ry Ar t Co ll ect ion, Ba r ce lona, ACF0692.

Fig. 3 Untitled, 1989 - 90/2013. Cot ton shirt s, steel , and p laster; fi ve parts, ove ra ll clirne n sions: 178.3 x 231 x 26.3 c m (70.2 x 90.9 x 10% in. ). Priva t e co llection, Rome.

Fig. 4 P/egariaMuda (detai l), 2008-10. Wood, min eral co mpound, meta 1, and grass; 78 of 166 units , each 164 x 214 x 61 cm (64% x 84½ x 24 in.). lnhotim Collect ion , Brazil. Installation view at Mu seum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 2015.

Another object requiring a complex maintenance routin e is A Flor de Pie/ (Fig. 5). The work makes extensive use of rose petals, which would dry and crumble if left untr eated. Thu s, th e challenge for Salcedo is to defy their nature to keep them soft , pliable, and fl exibl e for a long per_iod of time. The solution is a multistep process that involves treating the petal s fir st with turpentin e, followed by glycerin and collagen, followed by an immer sion in shellsol and pigment; then pres sing them between sheets of Mylar with glycerin and pigment ; then soaking and saturating them with pigmented wax; before finally f\attening them in between high -densit y fo am for a month. Th e petals are stitched together with waxed thread , and the juncture betw een the petal and thread is also waxed . They are oriented for sewing in accordance with a set of rul es; for examp le, thr ee petals must overlap per stitch, and no stems must be positioned together. As different ver sion s of A Flor de Pie/ have been made , the construction has evolved so that the petal s are sewn together but also onto a transparent sheet of biofilm backing material that adds st rength and reduces the risk of damage during the handling required for installation and storag e. Thi s creates a flexible tarpaulin of variegated rose petals that can be draped over an armature wh en installed in a gallery . When not on display, the shroud of rose petal s is stored on an adjustable roller between carefully selected sheets of padding and release films .17This approach maintain s the f\atness of the petals and also limits air exchange, and therefore oxidation and evaporation - all of which assist in the piece being well preserved in storage. We know from putting test petals into an oven at l00 ' F for the duration of a month that , over time , the petal s will be come brittle; but we also know that accelerated aging does not precisely simulate natural aging, and that the only sure way of knowing time 's effects is to wait and see. Over the long term, we do anticipate that despite the care that has gone into the work 's creation and preserv atio n, degradation and

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et als F. 5 3 RoseP A'~iorde Pie/ (detai~, ~~~ ~m (133;:;. and thread , 340 . ns variabl e). Gift oog9 Museurn, orV 196 3/sin .) (dimens /1F . r,1ern M 5 eums vard Art u .d Thompson, ,n n Jr., of Mr. G. Oav1 D vid Thompso h' ase . G a . pure of h1s son , . exchange, . Levin Class of 1958, by ·1yof Ela1ne_ ez· h eneros 1 Enriqu ' through l e 9 Sch neider 0 sitV in honor o f Mart ough 1he gene: 133. and purchase t ir artin Haie, 201 . of Oeborah a 11ci M

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