Salcedo, a Colombianborn artist, addresses the politics of memory and forgetting in work that embraces fraught situations in dangerous places.
Noted critic and theorist Mieke Bal narrates between the disciplines of contemporary culture in order to boldly reimagine the role of the visual arts.
Both women are pathbreaking figures, globally renowned and widely respected, Doris Salcedo, meet Mieke Bal,
In Of What One Cannot Speak, Bal leads us into intimate encounters with Salcedos art, encouraging us to consider each work as a “theoretical object” that invitesand demandscertain kinds of considerations about history, death, erasure, and grief.
Bal ranges widely through Salcedos work, from Salcedos Atrabiliarios seriesin which the artist uses worn shoes to retrace los desaparecidos “the disappeared” from nations like Argentina, Chile, and Colombiato Shibboleth, Salcedos onceinalifetime commission by the Tate Modern, for which she created a rupture, as if by earthquake, that stretched the length of the museum halls concrete floor.
In each instance, Salcedos installations speak for themselves, utilizing household items, human bones,
and common domestic architecture to explore the silent spaces between violence, trauma, and identity.
Yet Bal draws out even deeper responses to the work, questioning the nature of political art altogether and introducing concepts of metaphor, time, and space in order to contend with Salcedos powerful sculptures and installations.
An unforgettable fusion of art and essay, Of What One Cannot Speak takes us to the very core of events we are capable of rememberingyet still uncomfortably cannot speak aloud.
She's brillant and her analysis of Salcedo's work is relevant to any form of political art, Her writing, however, is dense and overly academic, I read this book in graduate school for an art history class and it was truly challenging, Brace yourself! Mieke Bal is a Dutch literary theorist, cultural and art historian, Areas of interest range from biblical and classical antiquity toth century and contemporary art and modern literature, feminism and migratory culture.
Her many publications include A Mieke Bal Reader, Travelling Concepts in the Humanitiesand Narratologyth edition, Her view of interdisciplinary analysis in the Humanities and Social Sciences is expressed in the profile of what she has termed “cultural analysis”, the basis of ASCA.
See the video clip on the right side of this page, where I explain the approach, Mieke is also a video artist, her internationally exhibited documentaries on migration include Separations, State of Suspension, Becoming Vera Mieke Bal is a Dutch literary theorist, cultural and art historian.
Areas of interest range from biblical and classical antiquity toth century and contemporary art and modern literature, feminism and migratory culture.
Her many publications include A Mieke Bal Reader, Travelling Concepts in the Humanitiesand Narratologyth edition, Her view of interdisciplinary analysis in the Humanities and Social Sciences is expressed in the profile of what she has termed “cultural analysis”, the basis of ASCA.
See the video clip on the right side of this page, where I explain the approach, Mieke is also a video artist, her internationally exhibited documentaries on migration include Separations, State of Suspension, Becoming Vera and the installation Nothing is Missing and are part of the Cinema Suitcase collective.
With Michelle Williams Gamaker she made the feature film A Long History of Madness, a theoretical fiction about madness, and related exhibitions.
Her following project Madame B: Explorations in Emotional Capitalism, also with Michelle, is exhibited worldwide, She just finished a feature film andscreen installation on René Descartes and his infelicitously ending friendship with Queen Kristina of Sweden.
Occasionally she acts as an independent curator, Her co curated exhibitionMOVE travelled to four countries, She is currently preparing an exhibition for the Munch museum in Oslo, sitelink.