Doris Salcedo

In Context: Violence and Contemporary Art in Colombia -- Salcedo's Influences: Artists, Works, Practices -- The Six Visual Strategies -- Organic and Ephemeral: Materiality in Salcedo's Most Recent Works -- Inherent Vice and the Ship of Theseus / Narayan Khandekar -- Artist Biography and Exhibition History

Doris Salcedo, a Colombian-born artist, addresses the politics of memory and forgetting in work that embraces fraught situations in dangerous places. Noted critic and theorist Mieke Bal narrates between the disciplines of contemporary culture in order to boldly reimagine the role of the visual arts. Both women are pathbreaking figures, globally renowned and widely respected. Doris Salcedo, meet Mieke Bal. In Of What One Cannot Speak, Bal leads us into intimate encounters with Salcedo’s art, encouraging us to consider each work as a “theoretical object” that invites—and demands—certain kinds of considerations about history, death, erasure, and grief. Bal ranges widely through Salcedo’s work, from Salcedo’s Atrabiliarios series—in which the artist uses worn shoes to retrace los desaparecidos (“the disappeared”) from nations like Argentina, Chile, and Colombia—to Shibboleth, Salcedo’s once-in-a-lifetime commission by the Tate Modern, for which she created a rupture, as if by earthquake, that stretched the length of the museum hall’s concrete floor. In each instance, Salcedo’s installations speak for themselves, utilizing household items, human bones, and common domestic architecture to explore the silent spaces between violence, trauma, and identity. Yet Bal draws out even deeper responses to the work, questioning the nature of political art altogether and introducing concepts of metaphor, time, and space in order to contend with Salcedo’s powerful sculptures and installations. An unforgettable fusion of art and essay, Of What One Cannot Speak takes us to the very core of events we are capable of remembering—yet still uncomfortably cannot speak aloud.

This exhibition catalogue highlights Salcedo's most recent work, in which the artist commemorates and universalizes the global epidemic of violent deaths. In particular, the work can be seen as an artistic response to the murder of some 1,500 young men by the Colombian army from 2003 to 2009. Salcedo's installation Plegaria Muda, which can be translated as silent prayer,A" comprises groupings of dozens of identical, roughly hewn tables. Embedded in these tables are chunks of earth and blades of grass. The wood's grey hue and smooth, dull surface contrasts with the mossy contours of the soil and with the jewel-like delicacy of the grass. These unmarked burial grounds characterize Salcedo's talent for transforming mundane objects into eloquent works of art. Full-page illustrations capture the installation's palette and sombre patterns, allowing the reader to experience the sorrow and solace of Salcedo's work. In addition, this volume includes images of Salcedo's other sculptures, including Shibboleth, the Unland, and La Casa Viuda series, along with essays by curator Isabel Carlos and other acclaimed critics.

Building on the scholarship of key art historians and theorists such as Judith Butler and Mieke Bal, Claudette Lauzon embarks upon a transnational analysis of contemporary artists who challenge the assumption that 'home' is a stable site of belonging.

"Doris Salcedo's work gives visible and concrete form to the inexpressible effects of terror, pain, and destruction which are the stock-in-trade of repressive political and military regimes, specifically those in her native Colombia. That it does so without recourse to the literal underscores the extraordinary complexity of her endeavor, which investigates the relationship between the intimate, poetic, and unique nature of an individual's life and the shattering histories of power and control to which it can be subjected." [From the Introduction by Marcia Tucker, Director of the New Museum of Contemporary Art].

This title examines the motivations for the critiques that have been applied to the idea of aesthetics and argues that theorists and artists now hunger for a new kind of aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral and political demands. The book shows how, for decades, aesthetic critiques have often concerned art's treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art. Collectively, these critiques have generated an anti-aesthetic stance that is now prevalent in the contemporary art world.

In-depth scholarship on the central artists, movements, and themes of Latin American art, from the Mexican revolution to the present A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art consists of over 30 never-before-published essays on the crucial historical and theoretical issues that have framed our understanding of art in Latin America. This book has a uniquely inclusive focus that includes both Spanish-speaking Caribbean and contemporary Latinx art in the United States. Influential critics of the 20th century are also covered, with an emphasis on their effect on the development of artistic movements. By providing in-depth explorations of central artists and issues, alongside cross-references to illustrations in major textbooks, this volume provides an excellent complement to wider surveys of Latin American and Latinx art. Readers will engage with the latest scholarship on each of five distinct historical periods, plus broader theoretical and historical trends that continue to influence how we understand Latinx, Indigenous, and Latin American art today. The book’s areas of focus include: The development of avant-garde art in the urban centers of Latin America from 1910-1945 The rise of abstraction during the Cold War and the internationalization of Latin American art from 1945-1959 The influence of the political upheavals of the 1960s on art and art theory in Latin America The rise of conceptual art as a response to dictatorship and social violence in the 1970s and 1980s The contemporary era of neoliberalism and globalization in Latin American and Latino Art, 1990-2010 With its comprehensive approach and informative structure, A Companion to Modern and Contemporary Latin American and Latinx Art is an excellent resource for advanced students in Latin American culture and art. It is also a valuable reference for aspiring scholars in the field.