We happen to know a lot of women who have inspired painters into creating genuine works of art. Take Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picaso’s muse, for instance, Simonetta Vespucci in “The Birth of Venus”painted by Boticelli, or Victorine Meurent who inspired Manet’s renowned “Olympia”. Ironically, when it comes to naming those daring women who have come to be artists themselves, our list suddenly runs short. What if I told you that in Colombia there is an artist who brings absence, oppression, and the gap between the disempowered and the powerful into objects? This artist’s work speaks without words and does not need touch to reach out to people. Her name is Doris Salcedo, a proud powerful Colombian woman who has not only made a point in highlighting the loss of memory and social injustice from behalf of humanity, but also has transformed suffering into art.

Her awards include a commission from Tate Modern, London (2007); the Ordway Prize, from the Penny McCall Foundation (2005); and a Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Grant (1995). Her work has appeared in major exhibitions at Tate Modern, London (2007); Castello de Rivoli, Turin (2005); and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2002); among others. 

Now picture this: Colombia’s brutal conflict history at the Guggenheim museum. If you couldn’t, let me lead you through three, out of all the fascinating segments, of Doris Salcedo’s exposition I believe you will find interesting:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.

“La plegaria muda” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    It's curious to stumble upon these labyrinth structures made out of pairs of inverted tables where earth is also distributed between the surfaces of the tables. On a closer inspection one notices how there happens to be not only the presence but the smell of real blades of grass that seem to be growing directly out of the wood.

The Silent Prayer refers to the murder of young people from impoverished rural areas by members of the Colombian army. Furthermore, the size of the tables is no coincidence, for it resembles the size of a human body as a sign of morning. The way the tables have been distributed suggest a setting similar to a cemetery and its repetition suggesting a vast score of senseless deaths. As for the grass making its way through the coarse wood might appear to be a symbol of healing and redemption or it might as well be a reminder of how easy it is to forget the suffering of others as time goes forward.

 

2.

“Disremembered” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    In contrast to the previous segment, this second one has been inspired by both Latin American, and American mothers who lost their children to gun violence. This garments that may seem as mirages to the bare eye were weaved from silk along with many thousands of burned needles; its delicate beauty is deceptive, for it would be torturous to the wearer.

Disremembered is a reminder of the suffering of survivors not only from devastating laws but also from society’s lack of empathy. The act of suturing it together is conceived as the way one can pierce and connect at the same time.

 

3.

“A Flor de piel” 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    This masterpiece memorializes a specific victim, a Colombian nurse who faced a brutal captivity and murder. Salcedo sought to find the way to express her woeful fate at the same time beauty would also be part of the whole in order for this monument to be worthy of the victim’s memory. Her final result takes the form of a cloak made up of stitched rose petals which cover up a great deal of the room’s floor. The artist had to work side by side with scientists in order to find a way to maintain the petals in a living yet dead appearance. The latter recalls the countless disappeared whose bodies have not been claimed.The rose petals might be thought of as romantic, yet they are also a Christian symbol for the blood of martyrs. This is how when taking in the aspect of the appearance of this work it might turn into a disturbing one: Bleeding flesh.

It is said that “A flor de piel” was first displayed in Bogotá a few days after Jaime Garzon was murdered Salcedo pinned the rose petals near his house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Doris Salcedo has acknowledged her art as a “funereal oration”. It attempts the need to mourn at the same time its purpose is to return meaning and purpose to those who have been victims of violence. I can assure you that there is not a single moment that Doris Salcedo’s art does not transport you and fills you with a sense of poetry expressed in objects that also happen to hold back great solemnity. Her display of objects does not only narrate Colombia’s painful events, but what we all human beings have in common: We all experience pain. What better way to express it than art? .