The Materiality of Mourning
Doris Salcedo
2016
Texts by Mary Schneider Enriquez, Narayan Khandekar, and Doris Salcedo. Edited by Micah Buis, Sarah Kuschner and Cheryl Pappas.
Published by Harvard Art Museums
Salcedo has long been interested in creating works that respond to the violence that has roiled her native Colombia. However, since gaining wide acclaim in the 1990s, she has broadened her approach to address both past and present violence faced by societies around the world. Salcedo unites a desire to mourn and acknowledge the forgotten with a deep commitment to challenge and extend the boundaries of the materials she uses in doing so. Today, the escalation of civil violence in the United States as well as abroad makes her works more resonant and her artistic project all the more urgent.