Introduction
Art is undeniably a powerful tool that plays a significant role in addressing pertinent societal issues. Essentially, there are many means of communication, and art is one of the most effective methods that embody a rhetorical message for the audience. Art is a powerful communication tool because it enables individuals to express themselves in a manner that transcends language barriers and traditional forms of communication. Bal asserts that art allows people to convey complex emotions, ideas, and messages that may be difficult to express through words alone (186). Most significantly, art can evoke a visceral and emotional response in the audience, allowing them to connect with the artist’s message on a deeper level.
Doris Salcedo’s art is a prime example of influential art that addresses social and political issues, thereby providing a platform for marginalized voices to be heard. Salcedo, a Colombian artist, uses her works of art to witness the violence and trauma experienced by marginalized communities. It also serves as a powerful reminder of the injustices that continue to be perpetrated worldwide.
The artist employs a range of materials and techniques to create personal and emotionally charged works that invite viewers to reflect on the impact of violence on individuals and communities. Her works are often made from ordinary objects transformed through their use in her installations, such as chairs, clothing, and furniture. Salcedo’s art is aesthetically striking and politically and socially significant, evoking themes of loss, absence, and mourning (Reyes 455). Additionally, her art is crucial in contributing to the ongoing debate about the relationship between art and activism. Doris Salcedo’s artworks that witness the trauma and violence inflicted upon marginalized communities include Atrabiliarios, Shibboleth, Disremembered, and Plegaria Muda.
Atrabiliarios
Atrabiliarios is Salcedo’s artwork that bears poignant testimony to the violence and trauma inflicted upon vulnerable populations. Essentially, the art mainly represents the suffering of women in Colombia during the internal conflict between two illegal armed groups in the 1980s (Giunta 4). The three-part work primarily comprises worn women’s shoes embedded in niches in the gallery wall, covered with stretched and preserved animal membranes, and attached to the wall with medical stitches.
Salcedo collected this footwear from the households of the people who had reportedly disappeared from their homes. This bizarre vanishing was often a form of punishment and socialization control exercised during the war between Colombia’s guerrilla and paramilitary rebel groups. The empty boxes that house the shoes are also made of animal fiber and seemingly foretell the coming of more deaths and the perpetuation of the cycle of violence and suffering. The diaphanous surfaces of the niches conceal their contents, suggesting the troubled relationship between memory and time.
Salcedo’s comprehensive study and field exploration in the Colombian rural areas played a significant role in shaping her installations and sculptures, which attest to the human consequences of criminal and political violence. During her fieldwork, she learned that female victims were subjected to specific cruelty and that shoes were often used to identify remains. Therefore, the artist uses the shoes as a symbol of lost lives, and the enclosure of these shoes within a box and a layer of animal fiber serves as a clear metaphor for the lives of the owners of these shoes (Carreño Mendoza 239).
The shoes represent a powerful symbol of the absence and loss of life, which is a specter of death and suffering, and the owners of the shoes have reportedly hidden or been silenced due to violence. The cow bladder covering the niches in the gallery wall creates a frosted layer between the discarded shoes and the audience, evoking thoughts of post-autopsy stitching. Further, the footwear’s physical imprint highlights the actual human cost of the violence perpetrated. The shoes’ enclosure in niches embedded into the gallery wall represents the collective silence and forgetfulness surrounding these victims.
Essentially, Salcedo’s art alludes to the female victims of violence in Colombia who have gone through. According to Salcedo, art and tragedy are closely intertwined, with the series title representing a wanton and violent personality, which she adjudicates as the act of violence to which these Colombian women were subjected (Saona 199). In addition, her art commemorates the lives lost and highlights the regularly unrecognized and longstanding adverse impact of violence and trauma on vulnerable populations.
The artist’s unorthodox medium combines domestic furniture and rigid building materials such as steel and concrete. This manipulation of an ordinary environment transforms the viewer’s impression of a home from a safe and habitable space to a disorienting and confounding experience. While Salcedo could have employed ordinary sculpting techniques, such as modeling and chiseling, she instead adopted symbols and figures of violence, including burying and bending. Ideally, Salcedo’s work speaks to the need for social justice and the power of art to communicate the experiences of marginalized communities.
Shibboleth
Shibboleth is another of Doris Salcedo’s works of art that aims to give voice to marginalized communities’ experiences of trauma and violence. Creating the artwork installation involves making a deep crevice in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall floor. This crevice is then filled with a concrete replica of a rock face from Colombia with a wire chain-link fence embedded in it.The piece of art is a digital photograph that depicts the Turbine Hall with a slim and lengthy fissure extending across its floor, and is part of four photographs that show different views of the same scene.
The expression “Shibboleth” denotes a saying, term, or tradition that can verify if a person is a member of a specific area or community (Redfield). The crack that runs the entire length of the hall is a metaphor for the divisions and fractures within society, especially those arising from racism, ethnicity, and migration. It is also a physical manifestation of these divisions’ violence and oppression.
Shibboleth is a profound representation of society’s political and social divisions and the various ways the divisions can be used to propagate oppression and violence. Essentially, Salcedo’s work draws the viewer’s attention to the various ways society is divided and encourages the audience to acknowledge the historical and political factors that have caused the division. According to Nakase, the fissure on the floor within the Shibboleth exhibit may represent the harm resulting from the cultural and geographic marginalization of specific communities (141). According to Salcedo, modern art museums practice a type of discrimination by excluding non-European cultures, which is primarily due to their inadequate recognition of the contributions made by those cultures. Primarily, the art symbolizes the deep-seated inequality among various communities and how the inequality can create fissures that divide people.
At first glance, the art appears to be nothing more than a crack in the floor. When one comes closer to the crack, it seemingly appears that it is not merely a physical break in the concrete but also a symbolic one. Therefore, Shibboleth bears witness to trauma and violence through its physicality, with the installation being a massive, imposing structure that dominates the space in which it is located.
As visitors walk along the crack, they learn their vulnerability and fragility in the face of such overwhelming force. Thus, it reminds them of the violence inflicted on marginalized populations and how it can be psychological and physical (Alzate and Marín 83). The Shibboleth crack symbolizes the gaps between various communities and how the gaps can be used to marginalize and oppress.
Furthermore, the artist’s attempt to challenge modernist ideas of beauty is based on the physical location of the Turbine Hall and the museum’s position within the culturally significant city of London. The artwork installed aims to give a voice to those marginalized from the history of modernity and high Western culture, and it symbolizes the essential geographic divisions that have local and global significance (Redfield). Therefore, the art’s physical site plays a significant part in helping to analyze the role of art in the formation of the stereotype of human beauty.
Plegaria Muda
Another practical work of art by Doris Salcedo that bears testimony to the trauma and violence experienced by vulnerable populations is Plegaria Muda, which means silent prayer. The installation is made of hundreds of wooden chairs stacked on top of one another, each filled with a thick layer of earth and grass on top. Fundamentally, the arrangement of Salcedo’s artwork creates a maze-like and asymmetrical pattern, which evokes the feeling of being inside a cemetery for the observer (Gené). It represents a place of mourning and memory and indicates the trauma and violence experienced by marginalized communities. The tables are designed to mimic the size and shape of the human body, and their wooden structure evokes the image of coffins in the viewers’ minds. Additionally, the layer of soil placed inside the tables gives the impression that it was recently dug out of a grave.
Salcedo’s inspiration for creating Plegaria Muda came from her research on gang violence in Los Angeles, where over 10,000 young people have been murdered in the past two decades. Fundamentally, her time in Los Angeles made her ponder the impact of such violence on marginalized communities, leading to situations she described as “social death.” Furthermore, her artistic creations were a reaction to the killing of approximately 2,500 young individuals in Colombia carried out by the nation’s military from 2003 to 2009 (Rojas-Sotelo 28).
Salcedo had accompanied grieving mothers in Colombia searching for their missing sons in mass graves. The abandonment of the killed young men in isolated and unidentified locations and the tiring process through which their mothers were forced to identify them motivated Salcedo to create a place of witnessing and mourning. Thus, the artwork serves as a place of witnessing and mourning for the unburied dead, offering a space for remembrance and commemoration and affirming the significance of each individual’s proper burial.
Further, the installation invites the viewers to contemplate the collective trauma of death and opens up a space for each dead body in society. While Salcedo generates Plegaria Mudo by studying acts of violence, the art provides the viewers with a contemplative stillness that confronts them with unfathomable grief caused by the reduction of violent death to insignificance. The artwork is a passionate cry for injustice, crime, and abuse, especially for the vulnerable population, and a silent prayer for a better world, offering hope that life might prevail even under challenging circumstances (Delgado Marín, 72).
Ideally, through the installation, Salcedo calls society’s attention to the human cost of violence and its impact on marginalized communities. It is a powerful reminder of the ongoing trauma and violence experienced by communities that are often forgotten or ignored by those in positions of power. Plegaria Mudo bears witness to the suffering of these communities and asks society to acknowledge their pain and work towards a more just and equitable society.
Disremembered
Doris Salcedo’s Disremembered is a collection of works that documents and reflects the suffering and violence endured by marginalized communities, specifically American mothers who have lost their children to gun violence. The art reflects on the mothers affected by gun violence in the US. It is based on interviews conducted by the artist with hundreds of mothers across the country, particularly in Chicago, where gun deaths reached a 25-year high in 2021. The sculptural works are made of woven raw silk and thousands of burnt needles representing society’s inability to mourn and the lack of empathy permeating public life (Ables).
The artwork’s details alternate between visible and invisible, representing a fading memory. Silk and nickel generate a sense of paradox that implies beauty yet danger, making it unclear whether the artist intended it to mean protection or harm. The shroud-like silk garments are a heartfelt tribute to the mothers who lost their children to gun violence, thus signifying the anguish suffered by the victims of political violence.
Fundamentally, Disremembered artwork reflects on the trauma and violence inflicted upon the vulnerable communities represented by the US mothers who lost their children to gun violence. These mothers’ grief is profound; they are forced to live in empty houses, trying to forget despite this relentless pain. According to Williamson, the mothers mourn every day, even after the media attention vanishes, and they compel themselves to work and try to forget the pain of their loss (528).
The artist asserts that the sculptures are like ghosts since they are almost non-existent, and forgetting has already occurred. Through her work, Salcedo explores how society fails to acknowledge other people’s grief, causing them even more pain. The installation demonstrates how an individual’s loss is often not registered by others, further stigmatizing those in mourning and adding to their pain. Ideally, every time a massacre occurs, society suddenly remembers past massacres, but has already forgotten what the families who lose their loved ones endure.
Furthermore, the installation addresses the forgetfulness that society experiences after a tragedy. The artwork captures and highlights the pain and violence endured by marginalized communities by bringing attention to the issue and making the voices of the victims heard. It is an honor to the strength and resilience of the vulnerable populations forced to endure trauma and violence. Moreover, Salcedo’s art highlights society’s lack of empathy and response toward their suffering, providing a space for mourning and remembrance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Doris Salcedo’s artwork effectively shows the trauma and violence inflicted upon vulnerable populations and marginalized communities. The artist’s immersive installations and sculptures highlight the plight of those who have suffered from political violence, police brutality, displacement, and gun violence. These artworks invite the audience to bear witness to the experience of these communities and serve as a form of funereal oration.
Moreover, they recognize the need to mourn while attempting to restore dignity, meaning that violence takes away from its subjects. Most significantly, Salcedo’s art reminds society of the significance of empathy and compassion in a world where others do not always acknowledge the pain of others.Thus, she uses her art as a platform for those silenced and a call to action for those who have the power to inform change.
Works Cited
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