ONE way of teasing out the core values of any society is to study how it mourns. From the pyramids of Giza to a crusader’s tomb complete with recumbent knight-on-a-slab, artists have grappled with how to give visible form to absence, to make sense of death for those left behind. Whereas Lenin’s tomb exposes the disturbing autocratic heart of the Soviet workers’ paradise, the Holocaust memorial close by the site of Hitler’s bunker in Berlin reflects the urgent task of simultaneously obliterating and remembering.
No living artist has explored the modern way of grief more movingly than Doris Salcedo, a Colombian who commemorates the often anonymous victims of violence around the world, beginning with her native land. “A Flor de Piel” (pictured) honours one of the victims of that troubled history, a nurse tortured to death. Over 30 years Ms Salcedo has testified on behalf of the dead through sculptures and site-specific installations that dignify suffering and challenge society to pay attention.
A retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, reveals the artist’s uncanny ability...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1Hi2peD
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