“Memory, of course, is the essence of my work” – Doris Salcedo
Colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s haunting and deeply poignant artworks explore universal themes of loss and memory. Profoundly affected by the Civil War that ravished her nation for decades, Salcedo turned to sculpture in the 1980s as a means of memorializing the hundreds of thousands of lives lost as a result of this political conflict. Her sculptures, which are comprised of household objects such as chairs, tables, beds and cabinets, make manifest the void left behind by such loss and serve as lasting reminders of the victims’ absence. In Untitled, executed in 1995, Salcedo fills a traditional, wooden cabinet with cement and iron bars, resulting in a work that is both worn in appearance and beautiful in the memory it serves to commemorate. This tomb-like sculpture not only explores the plight of the victim, but also alludes to the pain and suffering of remembrance and those who are left behind. The physical weight of the concrete lends a permanence to Untitled, and mimics the enduring emotional weight carried by family members and survivors who lost loved ones to the war.
Yet despite such sorrow, Salcedo nevertheless finds beauty in her artistic process. She notes, “I believe that if you want to dignify a human life then you have to come back to beauty because that is where we find dignity. And almost turn it into a sacred space. That is the level of beauty that should be present in the work." (Doris Salcedo, quoted in “Doris Salcedo: Memory as the essence of work”, SFMOMA, 2004, online) For Salcedo, works such as Untitled become sacred in their ability to dignify, honor, and remember the lives of those they commemorate. As such, Untitled exists at a unique crossroad – on the one hand, deeply personal and inextricably imbedded within the history of Colombia’s political strife; and on the other, powerfully universal, addressing omnipresent concerns such as loss, love, and ultimately, beauty.