New York
Doris Salcedo asks questions that are difficult to answer. Can art serve a purpose? Can it act as witness or perform as testimonial? Can it console and heal? Can it repurpose trauma? Can it be both aesthetically pleasing and meaningful? These queries form the heart of Salcedo’s practice. But rather than reply, she ensnares us in the creative and moral challenges of making art in a world dominated by war, state-sponsored violence, and terrorism. As a recent retrospective demonstrated, Salcedo has long dealt with the mechanisms of power and its abuse. Indeed, it is chilling to look at the works she has made since the late-1980s, which reference death squads and mass killings in her native Colombia, and realize that not much has changed, except perhaps locations and names…see the entire review in the print version of October’s Sculpture magazine.
