Art Museums Celebrate Opening of Colombian Artist Doris Salcedo's Special Exhibit

Students and local residents flooded into the Harvard Art Museums’ Menschel Hall on Tuesday to learn about the theme of mourning in Colombian artist Doris Salcedo’s work.

Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Mary Schneider Enriquez moderated the conversation between Salcedo and Professor of Aesthetics and General Theory of Value Elaine Scarry to celebrate the opening of Salcedo’s special exhibition titled Doris Salcedo: The Materiality of Mourning.

The theme of mourning that pervades Salcedo’s artwork often stems from incidents of political violence. For example, Salcedo lowered 280 chairs over the sides of Colombia’s Palace of Justice in 2002 to commemorate the seventeenth anniversary of the siege of the Palace by guerrillas and the government’s bloody counterattack. Each chair represented a life lost during the siege, and this public installation is a trademark of Salcedo’s work that seeks to give voice to victims of political violence.

“My solitary work as an artist is also a communal act where everything comes together,” Salcedo said.

Scarry said that, in Salcedo’s art, there is an “enduring sense of the person or people lost” which gives people “a space for us to mourn.”

Salcedo said she uses empathy when she creates art to express mourning. Salcedo’s famous A Flor de Piel, in which she sewed thousands of preserved rose petals together into a shroud laid on the floor, was made in honor of a torture victim.

“When I was thinking about the experience of the victim of torture for whom I made this piece, I was completely lost. When you face torture and horror, when you look at it and think of it very closely, then you become as silent as the victim himself,” Salcedo said.

When asked about the impact of her work, Salcedo said she is unsure of how people will perceive it.

“Whatever the public, [what] somebody will do or won’t do with the work is entirely up to the person,” Salcedo said. “I can only make it in the most loving manner and then it’s out of my hands.”

Professor of Religion and Latina/o Studies Mayra R. Rivera said she sees the intersection of art, political violence, and religion as a powerful tool to engage in a discussion about the Latino experience and that she plans to incorporate Salcedo’s work into her class next semester.

“The thematic of mourning and absence that is at the center of a lot of what intellectuals wrestle with,” Rivera said. “How do we engage the histories of our past, histories that include political violence and also colonization and slavery and indigenous communities? And how those become important in what Latino scholars argue as knowledge?”

Salcedo’s special exhibition will be on view Nov. 4 through Apr. 9 on the third floor of the Harvard Art Museums.