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Colombian artist Doris Salcedo is one of today's most internationally respected South American sculptors, whose work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate Gallery, London. Inspired as much by poetry and philosophy as by the affecting material qualities of sculpture, Salcedo subtly and painstakingly transforms everyday household objects and garments symbols of vanished existence and of the human tragedies that were its cause. In Atrabiliaros (1991-96) abandoned shoes of 'disappeared' Colombian people, half-concealed behind membranes of animal fibre, become ghost-like symbols of mourning. In Salcedo's ongoing untitled works, wooden furnishings, worn by long use and infilled with concrete, mutely evoke the lives they once served.American art critic Nancy Princenthal surveys Salcedo's work in terms of universal themes it evokes. New York-based curator Carlos Basualdo discusses with the artist her formative influences. German literary critic Andreas Huyssen focuses on the sculpture Unland: the orphan's tunic (1997). The Artist's Choice includes an extract from Otherwise Than Being (1974) by philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, and poems by Paul Celan (1920 70). The artist's observations on the human condition are discussed in conversation with art historian Charles Merewether.
