Untitled

Doris SalcedoWW-1992-130905

1992·Wood, concrete, steel, glass, and fabric·114.3 × 186.7 × 50.8 cm (45 × 73 1/2 × 20 in.)

<p>Doris Salcedo’s sculptures and installations offer an elegiac meditation on the violence in her native Colombia. Since 1988 the artist has interviewed people whose relatives have "disappeared" by order of the military or paramilitary squads associated with Colombia’s civil war and illegal drug trade, and she regularly visits abandoned villages, murder sites, and mass graves. <em>Untitled (Armoire)</em> is part of a series in which Salcedo buried domestic furniture and other personal objects in cement, stripping these utilitarian pieces of their functions and turning them into humble monuments to their lost, silenced, or forgotten owners. The artist explained, "There was one widow... who told me how difficult it was to continue living with objects that are reminders of her husband.... Every day you sit at the dining table and the empty chair is there, screaming the absence of that person. It can become a very difficult object to live with. So I tried to make those objects silent, encasing them in cement."</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1992
Medium: Wood, concrete, steel, glass, and fabric
Dimensions: 114.3 × 186.7 × 50.8 cm (45 × 73 1/2 × 20 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Doris Salcedo

Artist

Doris Salcedo

Sculpture

Doris Salcedo is a Colombian visual artist and sculptor. Her work is influenced by her experiences of life in Colombia and is generally composed of commonplace items such as wooden furniture, clothing, concrete, grass, and rose petals. Salcedo's work gives form to pain, trauma, and loss, while creating space for individual and collective mourning. These themes stem from her own personal history. Members of her own family were among the many people who have disappeared in politically troubled Colombia. Much of her work deals with the fact that, while the death of a loved one can be mourned, their disappearance leaves an unbearable emptiness. Salcedo lives and works in Bogotá, Colombia.

Bogotá, Colombia

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