| Dates: | born 1958
| | Biography: | 1958 Born in Bogota, Colombia.
Lives and works in Bogota, Colombia
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1999 Doris Salcedo: Unland, Tate
Gallery, London
Unland/Doris Salcedo: New Work, San
Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco
Unland/Doris Salcedo, The New
Museum of Contemporary Art, New
York; SITE
Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico
1996 Doris Salcedo, Le Creux de l’Enfer,
Thiers, France
Galeria Camargo Vilaca, Sao Paulo
1994 La Casa Viuda, Brooke Alexander,
New York
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1998 XXIV Bienal de Sao Paulo, Sao
Paulo
Displacements: Miroslaw Balka, Doris
Salcedo, Rachel Whiteread, Art Gallery
of Ontario, Toronto
From Head to Toe: Concepts of the
Body in Twentieth-Century Art, Los
Angeles County
Museum of Art, Los Angeles
Wounds: Between Democracy and
Redemption in Contemporary Art,
Moderna Museet, Stockholm
1997 BODY, The Art Gallery of New
South Wales, Sydney
1996 Distemper: Dissonant Themes in
the Art of the 1990s,
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, Washington DC
1994 Cocido y Crudo, Museo Nacional
de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid
1993 La Biennale di Venezia, XLV
Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte, Venice
1992 The Boundary Rider: 9th Biennale
of Sydney, Sydney
The Absent Body, Institute of
Contemporary Art, Boston
FURTHER READING
Bond, A. BODY (exh. cat), The Art
Gallery of New South Wales,
Sydney/Bookman Schwartz, Melbourne
1997
Bradley, J. "Introduction" and Andreas
Huyssen, "Sculpture, Materiality
and Memory in an Age of Amnesia,"
Displacements: Balka, Salcedo,
Whiteread (exh. cat.),
The Art Gallery of Toronto, Toronto 1998
Cameron, D. and C. Merewether. Doris
Salcedo (exh. cat.),
New York: The New Museum of
Contemporary Art 1998
Merewether, C. "Anonymity of Violence,"
Atrabiliarios (exh. cat.),
The Edwin A. Ulrich Museum of Art,
Wichita State University, Wichita 1997 | | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
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| | Description: | Doris Salcedo traces political and
psychological events through the altered
materials and circumstances of everyday
life. In her work things that should be
comfortable and familiar become strange
and even terrible.
This process parallels the distortion of
reality that occurs when power and
violence are used as means of social
control. What comfort can be left in the
bed one's lover has been murdered in?
What pleasure can one take in the
intimate possessions of one's spouse or
child when they have been dragged away
with no explanation? Objects retain
traces of those who have used them. It
is difficult to throw away such traces of
an absent loved one, and yet it is equally
difficult to continue using them as
though nothing had happened.
From a distance Salcedo's sturdy tables
look like ordinary household furniture. Up
close, however, they begin to reveal a
fragile covering of human hair. At first
there is simply a subtle distortion of the
appearance of the wood, but once the
hairs are recognised the table
metamorphoses into an animal
presence. There is something terribly
beautiful and yet repulsive about these
hybrid objects. Like the memory of a
loved one forever contaminated by the
image of their death, Salcedo's fusion of
inanimate matter and human remains
provokes a sense of abomination.
In another work, wardrobes are doubled
so that one structure seems to slide
seamlessly into another. Time and
space have been strangely loosened to
allow this slippage. All the holes, gaps
and cracks in the wood have been
meticulously sealed with white cement.
It is as if they have been rendered blind
and mute, just like those whose silence
is ensured by the threat of further
violence. This careful sealing of the
cracks is also read as an attempt to
keep something out or in. But in this
case the 'something' is elusive, like the
nebulous fear of some unforeseen
tragedy. These memorials will be housed
in the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool.
Although churches have tradition¬ally
been places of sanctuary, recent events
in Rwanda have demonstrated that
sometimes there is no refuge from the
horrors of political violence.
| | Description Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Description Source Date: | 1999 | | Gender: | female | | Type: | person |
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