In this interview, artist Doris Salcedo and critic Carlos Basualdo—who is from Rosario, Argentina—analyze Salcedo’s career from her student days in Colombia in the late 1970s to the present—the late 1990s—when she had gained considerable international recognition. Basualdo and Salcedo discuss the influence of artists like Colombian Beatriz González, as well as Joseph Beuys and Marcel Duchamp. Salcedo expresses her admiration for North American artist Gordon Matta-Clark and her affinity with Romanian poet Paul Celan. They discuss works like Atrabiliarios [Defiant]and La Casa Viuda [The Widowed House] in detail, contrasting Salcedo’s sculptural work with the Modern tradition and comparing it to Beuys’s social sculpture. Salcedo explains her vision of herself as an artist, stating that she—like other contemporary artists—is a “displaced” being. She also discusses the social function intrinsic to her work; her conception of sculpture; the convergence of the materials used and the sculptural space; her relationship with victims of violence in Colombia as the basis for her work; and her interpretation of the “third world” reality in which she participates and that she deems intrinsic to her production.

This interview is featured in a book on the work of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo (born 1958) by Phaidon publications, which specializes in contemporary artists. One of the first interviews ever given by Salcedo, it covers her career from the late 1970s until the late 1990s. The book also features an interview by critic Charles Merewether, a text by North American art critic Nancy Princenthal, as well as fragments of texts and poems chosen by Salcedo herself.  

This interview by Argentine art critic and curator Carlos Basualdo (born 1964) not only provides key concepts for interpreting Salcedo’s works but also sheds light on their theoretical basis. Indeed, Salcedo’s formulation of the social and political meaning of her art is in keeping with that of other international contemporary artists, as is her interest in current issues like displacement, exile, and the loss of loved ones, experiences that had recently been addressed in writings on the Holocaust.  

The interview provides rich information about Salcedo’s life and thought, as well as the position from which she makes her work: she is a member of a “third world” society and at the “center” of artistic operations that revolve around the experiences of victims of violence in Colombia.

Complementary to this text are earlier interviews by Santiago Villaveces [see “Art and Media-tion: Reflections on Violence and Representation”, doc. no. 1134483] and Hans-Michael Herzog [Doris Salcedo”, doc. no. 864431].