Shibboleth I-IV

Doris Salcedo

Doris Salcedo transforms everyday objects such as domestic furniture and clothing into immersive installations, performances, and sculptures that offer space for collective mourning—they honor victims of mass violence and political oppression. Her ghostly work often suggests layers of absence, loss, and memory. In her installation Noviembre 6 y 7 (2002), for example, Salcedo slowly lowered chairs from the roof of the Palace of Justice in Bogotá to commemorate the hundreds of people who died there in a 1985 massacre. Her haunting “Disremembered” (2014) series of sheer, shroud-like silk garments is a solemn tribute to American mothers who have lost children to gun violence. Salcedo has enjoyed solo exhibitions and prominent commissions at the Museo Reina Sofía, the Guggenheim Museum, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and the New Museum, among other institutions, and she has participated in Documenta, the São Paulo Bienal, and the Venice Biennale. Her work belongs in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and has commanded six figures on the secondary market.