Doris Salcedo: Confronting Violence and Memory Through Art

Throughout the summer, the Beyeler Foundation has been home to the works of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo, whose installations and sculptures have been making a powerful impact since the late 1980s. Her art encapsulates the violence of the world and preserves the memory of those who have disappeared. Within the exhibition, three works stand out, showcasing her extraordinary ability to convey complex themes with profound poetic force.

Embedding Memory in Concrete

When one mentions Doris Salcedo, a vivid image often springs to mind: a street in Istanbul, flanked by two buildings, where a towering mountain of wooden chairs, nearly two stories high, replaces a decrepit building. This monumental installation, created in 2003 for the Istanbul Biennial, serves as a tribute to migrants victimized by the forces of globalization. Each of the 1550 chairs represents the memory of an individual who has vanished. However, it extends beyond this poignant message, offering a broader, universal perspective on the human toll of war.

Doris Salcedo's profound connection to furniture is a recurring theme in her art. In 1989, at the outset of her career, she initiated a series that would span nearly three decades. She acquired wardrobes, dressers, and other wooden frames from antique stores, then meticulously covered and filled them with concrete, effectively silencing these pieces of furniture. Stripped of their original function, some of these pieces reveal frozen garments within, weighed down by the heavy burden of cement, symbolizing her belief that "it is impossible to bring past events into the present." The artist views these works as "a futile attempt to restore the victim's presence to our time," emphasizing their inherent absence. This approach may evoke comparisons to Rachel Whiteread's molded furniture, also aimed at representing the memory of bodies. However, Doris Salcedo provides a more optimistic counterpoint within this profound series. Visitors to the Beyeler Foundation can explore an entire room filled with upturned tables adorned with tufts of grass that appear to be sprouting, symbolizing new life in the making.

The Dangerous Garment

In Salcedo's sculptures and installations, clothing often serves as the most explicit means of embodying the memory of bodies. While she continued her meticulous work with furniture, the artist also turned her attention to the fabrics that individuals wear daily. How does one uniquely appropriate such a common object without inadvertently imitating the works of others, from Christian Boltanski to Louise Bourgeois?

One possible answer is found in the artist's monograph at the Beyeler Foundation, showcasing the "Disremembered" series. In this series, four nearly imperceptible transparent veils are pinned to white walls, resembling ghostly apparitions hovering in space. Their outlines faintly suggest long jackets, defined by the accumulation of fine horizontal lines. Upon closer inspection, viewers discover hundreds of needles meticulously inserted by the artist into the silk after being carefully cut, sharpened, twisted, and burned. In contrast to the heavy presence of concrete in wooden furniture, the violence in these works is manifested more subtly through the danger presented by these accumulated sewing accessories, which could cause immediate harm to anyone who wears them.

Doris Salcedo draws inspiration from the "sanbenito," a type of poncho used by the Spanish Inquisition to humiliate religious convicts. She encapsulates the suffering of mothers who lose their children, describing them as "ghosts" who are no longer truly present as the process of forgetting takes hold. These works also echo her installation "Untitled" (1989-2014), where folded white shirts are stacked on the ground and pierced through the heart by a metal rod. From this raw imagery to the subtler nuances of "Disremembered," the artist embodies grief within a profound material paradox, juxtaposing the softness, fragility, and comfort of fabric with the aggressiveness of metal, which can be painful, even deadly.

Rose Petals as a Second Skin

On August 13, 1999, a tragic event deeply affected Colombian society. At just thirty-eight years old, journalist and comedian Jaime Garzón was assassinated in the street by two men on motorcycles. As a symbol of threatened freedom of expression, Garzón had engaged in negotiations with the communist guerrilla to ease the conflict with the government, making him a target of the extreme right in Colombia. Doris Salcedo, profoundly moved by this event, collaborated with a group of artists to create a memorial on a white wall in her neighborhood. The memorial consisted of dozens of red roses, their buds turned downward. These delicate flowers, which held a special place in her heart, would resurface in her work more than two decades later in 2011 with "A Flor de Piel" ("Skin Deep").

Over the course of three years, Salcedo painstakingly assembled hundreds of rose petals through delicate stitching, creating a supple fabric as fine as it was expansive, resembling a satin sheet. The petals were woven together with such meticulous care that they appeared as though they were printed on the textile. The true significance of this work lies in the artist's labor, repeating the same slow, deliberate gestures day after day