DORIS SALCEDO

Her early sculptures and installations, such as La Casa Viuda (1992-1995), combined domestic furniture with textiles and clothing. Salcedo derived her materials from research into Colombia’s recent political history, so these belongings, suffused with the patina of use, were directly linked to personal and political tragedy. During the past few years, Salcedo’s work has become increasingly installation-based, using the gallery spaces or unusual locations to create vertiginous environments charged with politics and history. Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002) was a commemoration of the seventeenth anniversary of the violent seizing of the Supreme Court, Bogotá on 6 and 7 November, 1985. Salcedo sited the work in the new Palace of Justice where, over the course of 53 hours (the duration of the siege), wooden chairs were slowly lowered against the façade of the building from different points on its roof, creating “an act of memory” in order to re-inhabit this space of forgetting. In 2003, in Istanbul, she made an installation on an unremarkable street comprising 1,600 wooden chairs stacked precariously in the space between two buildings. In 2005, at the Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Salecdo re-worked one of the institution’s major rooms by extending the existing majestic, vaulted brick ceiling of the gallery. The installation subtly transformed the existing space, evoking thoughts of incarceration and entombment.

Doris Salcedo has exhibited in group exhibitions internationally including ‘The New Décor’, Hayward Gallery, London (2010), ‘NeoHooDoo’, PS1 Contemporary Art Centre, New York and The Menil Collection, Houston (2008), 8th Istanbul Biennial (2003), Documenta XI (2002) and XXIV São Paolo Biennial (1998). Solo exhibitions include ‘Plegaria Muda’, MUAC, Mexico; Moderna Museet, Malmö (2011) and ‘Neither’, Inhotim, Centro de Arte Contemporânea, Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2008), ‘Shibboleth’, Tate Modern, London (2007), and ‘Unland’ Tate Britain (1999), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1999 and 2005), Camden Arts Centre, London (2001) and New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1998).

Courtesy White Cube