Art Madrid'23 – Palimpsesto: Doris Salcedo’s reflection on violence

Doris Salcedo. “Palimpsesto”, 2017.

 

 

Doris Salcedo’s (Bogotá, 1958) work is not conformist, not it seeks the comfort of meaning either. To the contrary. This sculptor uses art to reflect on the suffering of marginated, the impact of political violence and the mourning as a human process that provides dignity to all of us. “Palimpsesto” is a work that encloses the purest essence of the modus operandi of this artist, and it achieves to represent the violence without violence.

 

 

 

Portrait of Doris Salcedo. Photo by ©Rui Gaudencio, 2014.

 

 

The artworks of Doris Salcedo are large projects in which she invests a lot of resources, both of time and of intellectual efforts. Each piece is the result of a confluence of elements that put together personal experiences, research and reflection upon the sense of the artwork and its communicative value. But the aim is to make visible a deep message that highlights the value of human life in a tumultuous period where natural disasters, armed conflicts and social discrimination push millions of people to move, migrate and risk their lives.

 

 

 

Doris Salcedo. “Palimpsesto”, 2017.

 

 

Doris Salcedo does not leave anyone indifferent. Her sculptures, on the edges of the classic concept of this discipline, have received much attention from many cultural institutions at an international level, and some of the biggest museums have organised monographic exhibitions, as the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (2015), the New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York, 1998), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1999 and 2005) or the Tate Modern of London (2007).

 

 

 

Doris Salcedo. Design of the project “Palimpsesto”, 2017.

 

 

This time, the Palacio de Cristal will host a sculpture-installation that reproduces the names of millions of men and women as a way to represent the tragedy, nowadays already usual, of people dying into the sea during their desperate escape from their country of origin. The same day of the opening, the museum has organised a lecture with the artist who, together with Estrella de Diego, an essayist and full professor of the Complutense University of Madrid, will explain to the public the message of her proposal “Palimpsesto”.

 

In the year 2020 in the heart of Barcelona a wandering gallery was born, the same one that in February 2021 would debut at Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal focused on contemporary portraits; with this subject matter it would manage to create a powerful dialogue between artwork and audience and make the seal Inéditad remain in the history of the event that contained it.

Jean Carlos Puerto. Protección. Oil and copper leaf on wood. 60 x 48. 2021. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Since that first time and until today, the wandering gallery has managed to build projects on otherness, has repositioned in the spotlight the discourses on the LGTBIQ+ collective, has consolidated a group of artists who share its principles of resilience and empathy and the best thing is that it continues to bet from the professionalism and commitment to give voice to the difference.

Claudio Petit-Laurent.. El Joven de la Perla. Oil on wood. 30 x 30 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Inéditad Gallery, thanks to its founder Luis López, its collaborators and the infinite possibilities manifested in the works of the artists it represents, is a gallery that has demonstrated its capacity and courage to stimulate the sensibility of the public through art and seduce a generation that moves between the glass window and the analogical story. Inéditad is a nomadic gallery that has gathered around it a community of artists and has moved the context with exhibition projects that think about LGTBIQ+ art without prejudices.

Pepa Salas Vilar. Las marcas del arcoiris. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 cm. 2022. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Pride and Prejudice was inaugurated. An exhibition that brings together the works of sixteen artists: Abel Carrillo, Alex Domènech, Carlos Enfedaque, Silvia Flechoso, Jamalajama, Daniel Jaén, Claudio Petit-Laurent, Jean Carlos Puerto, Fernando Romero, Pablo Rodríguez, Pepa Salas Vilar, Jack Smith, Pablo Sola, Bran Sólo, Elia Tomás and Utürüo. Painting, illustration, photography and digital art are the manifestations that bring into dialogue around fifty neatly threaded pieces, in a discursive line that discusses such a latent phenomenon as discrimination. To achieve this, the artists invited to the exhibition question themselves whether: Does discrimination exist within the LGTBIQ+ collective?

Pride and Prejudice Official Poster. Image courtesy of the gallery.

With approaches on and from the body, the proposal invites to celebrate diversity, proposes to question and self-question the prejudices and attitudes of society against the collective. Pride and Prejudice is a space for dialogue about the constructs imposed on us by society. It is also an oasis in which to deconstruct with tolerance and respect the subjectivities that sometimes prevent us from approaching the production of the participating artists, simply because "the beautiful" does not fit in an androgynous body. The subjugation of stereotypes are pressed with determination to find the beauty of diversity in other palpable facets of reality.

Pablo Sola. All men are dogs. Photography. 2014. Image courtesy of the gallery.

Throughout these three years Inéditad has stimulated the vindictive projection towards bad practices, has questioned estates around the LGTBIQ+ body and the most admirable thing, is that these capacities have resurfaced around the dialogue and the visual narrative of the stories that are told from the visual: Artworks that are people, art that is, per se, humanity. Overcome impositions and accept what is different in order to continue fighting against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia or transphobia and defend the equal rights that all the acronyms of the collective deserve in our community.

That's Pride and Prejudice: One creature, the happiest in the world. And maybe other projects and other people have said it - or felt it - before, but none so fairly.

Silvia Flechoso. Hola, soy maricón. Oil on canvas. 73 x 54 cm. 2023. Image courtesy of the gallery.

From June 8th until June 22nd you can visit Pride and Prejudice. Carrer de Palau núm. 4. Canal Gallery space. Barcelona.