¶ … Colombia is the third-largest recipient of military aid from the United States and is at a critical juncture in its turbulent history. More than three million people have been displaced in Colombia during the past decade alone, and violent deaths and kidnappings remain alarmingly high. While violence is nothing new to the people of Colombia, their response to its sources and causes have been portrayed in the visual arts in various ways, with one of the most recent manifestations of this being portrayal such as the "The Skin of Memory," developed by the anthropologist Pilar Riano-Alcala and the artist Suzanne Lacy in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team in Colombia. Because art must also serve a social function and civic responsibility, this thesis evaluates the social role of artists such as Alejandro Obregon, Debora Arango, Beatriz Gonzalez, Doris Salcedo and art projects such as "The Skin of Memory" in examining and understanding the problem of violence in Colombia, as an active element, witness, interpreter and mediator, and the relationship between artists and social and political violence in Colombia since 1948. To this end, a review of the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning the phases of violence experienced by Colombia over the past several decades is followed by a series of case studies of prominent Colombian artists and their interpretation and interpolation of these violent events. A summary of the research and salient findings are presented in the conclusion.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. Background on the history of violence in Colombia
III. Art and the Political Violence of 1948-1958 and the Revolutionary Violence of the 1960s -1980s
a. Case study: Alejandro Obregon
b. Case study: Deborah Arango
IV. Aesthetic Responses to Terroristic and Narcotic Violence in the 1980s and 1990s
a. Case study: Beatriz Gonzalez
b. Case study: Doris Salcedo
V. Surviving Violence, a New Millennium
a. Case study: Public art project: La piel de la memoria (the Skin of Memory)
V. Conclusions
The Face of Violence: Art as Witness, Interpreter and Mediator of Violence in Colombia
Introduction.
Throughout history, art has been one of the most fundamental methods humans have used to express and interpret the world in which they exist. As a result, from early cave paintings to modern art, artists have historically and traditionally been the witnesses, interpreters and mediators of the most important events to swirl around and shape humankind. Indeed, the inherent value of such expressive portrayals is not a vague or ephemeral thing, but rather represents for many victims of violence, "a window between worlds" by helping them to transition out of a painful past into a more hopeful future, recovering their sense of safety, power, possibility, and self-identity.
Today, many artists around the world are using their media in this fashion in ways that differ in form and style but which share a common sense of expression concerning the futility and dreadful costs associated with the mindless violence that continues to plague mankind.
Moreover, therapists and clinicians are increasingly turning to art and art therapy to help their patients express themselves and to come to grips with their inner turmoil that cannot be adequately articulated in words alone
. For instance, Kalmanowitz and Lloyd emphasize that, "In art therapy, making art, like poetry, may provide a place in which pain can live alongside joy, symbols and metaphor can represent that which is beyond human comprehension, memories can be expressed and witnessed, with no illusion."
It quickly becomes apparent that there are no illusions involved when it comes to the day-to-day violence that has been part of the lives of the people of Colombia for the past five decades and it is in the vein that art can play an important role in mitigating the impact of that violence on the victims and their families.
Clearly, then, art holds some universal qualities that are important for people of all walks of life in all cultures, and understanding how these perceptions play out today has assumed both new relevance and importance in a violent world. To this end, this study evaluates the social role of artists such as Alejandro Obregon, Debora Arango, Beatriz Gonzalez, Doris Salcedo among others, and art projects such as "The Skin of Memory" in examining and understanding the problem of violence in Colombia, as an active element, witness, interpreter and mediator, and the relationship between artists and the social and political violence that wracked Colombia throughout the 20th century and these issues are discussed further below.
Background on the History of Violence in Colombia.
Unfortunately, violence is certainly nothing new to the people of Colombia. Throughout their recent history, the country has been plagued by violence of all sorts, including the politically motivated violence that took place during the 1950s, the guerilla uprisings that took place in the 1960s and 1970s, and the drug trafficking-fueled violence that characterized the 1980s and 1990s, and indeed, to the present day. In addition, other types of violence have also included the institutional corruption that has resulted in the displacement of huge numbers of peasants and indigenous people, a process that continues to the present. Clearly, Colombians have historically experienced violence from a wide range of sources in ways that have overshadowed or least at affected virtually all other aspects of their lives. This is not to say, of course, that every single Colombian citizen has been a casualty of this ongoing violence, but it is to say that it is reasonable to assert that everyone in Colombia is a victim of this violence because of the profound impact that these events have had on the nation's citizenry over the years and its resulting collective consciousness as these events continue to affect many people in all walks of life. For instance, according to the Public Issues Committee of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches
, "In Colombia, the armed conflict between political actors has largely affected the civil society. Because of this confrontation, thousands, mostly innocent people, have died and more than three million people have been internally displaced. The conflict has gone beyond national borders, having a serious impact on neighboring countries."
In response, church leaders throughout Colombian have strengthened their work with victims and have repeatedly asked the government of Colombia and armed groups to look for a negotiated solution of the conflict which could bring peace with justice.
Likewise, artists of every persuasion have used their media to highlight these events in ways that memorialize and evoke memories of these events to ensure that the victims are not forgotten and the perpetrators are known today and to history. This legacy of grim and bloody reality has a lengthy history, though, which is discussed further below.
Political Violence between 1948 and 1958. The political violence that plagued Colombia throughout the mid-20th century was sufficiently severe during the decade of 1948 to 1958 to earn its own name. According to Amnesty International USA's Advocacy Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Carlos Salinas, "Colombia has been ruled for decades by two political parties, Liberal and Conservative, whose struggles have led to civil wars and regional conflicts. During their last conflict, La Violencia (from 1948 to 1953), 145,000 people were killed. For years following, the two parties collaborated in a power sharing arrangement that excluded other political views. However, the hegemony enjoyed by these two parties exacerbated Colombia's inequitable distribution of wealth."
In fact, the period 1948 to 1958 was a particularly turbulent overall time for the people of Colombia, but actually represented three distinct and major phases of political violence in the country. The first phase which lasted from 1946 to 1949, was characterized by the progressive dissolution of the political framework at the national level and escalating sectarian violence in many parts of provincial Colombia. The assassination of Gaitan on April 9, 1948, represented the most important event of the period that ended in November 1949, when two-party government ceased to exist in Colombia. The second phase of the violence in this decade occurred between November 1949 and June 1953, when the Violencia was in its most generalized form, usually exhibiting its "traditional" sectarian face. In other words, the majority of acts of Violencia could be attributed to various exchanges that occurred between actors from the Conservative regime which was in power in the government's capital and actors from the Liberal party, where the actors could be either ordinary civilians or political-minded guerrillas.
Phase three was started by a military coup that took place on June 13, 1953, which was led by General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla.
Thereafter, the "violence" that was part of the Violencia period declined significantly during his first year in power; however, the bloodshed quickly resumed and persisted until Pinilla's downfall on May 10, 1957.
Although not as widespread during the third phase as during the second, violence nevertheless achieved its most complex point under the rule of Rojas. In addition to traditional sectarian fighting, there was also a series of military campaigns launched during this period which were directed at leftist guerrillas who were labeled as communists by the government.
During this penultimate period of violence under Rojas, the violence that wracked Colombia assumed a number of different characteristics that included an economic quality as well as a political one with numerous assassinations taking place. These were literally contract killings there were sponsored by opposition forms. There were also horrendous genocidal acts that were carried out by gangs combined with authentic revolutionary fighting in some regions of the country.
The fourth and final phase of the Violencia began with the fall of Rojas Pinilla and the reconciliation between the Conservative and Liberal parties that resulted in the creation of the Frente Nacional government.
The majority of the strictly sectarian Violencia was finally stopped for the most part during this final phase of this ugly chapter in Colombia's history, and the cessation provided the opportunity for the governmental forces to address the root causes of much of the violence during the next 8 years and by 1965, the Violencia was over for all intents and purposes; however, violence and its impact on the national consciousness was certainly not completely eradicated from Colombia and these issues are discussed further below.
Revolutionary Violence from the 1960s to Present. From the victim's perspective, it could be suggested that violence is violence and its origins are of little consequence at the time of the mayhem. Nevertheless, the literature shows that the type of violence that emerged in Colombia during the latter half of the 20th century was qualitatively different in terms of what was being fought over and who was doing the fighting. According to human rights observer Dudley, by the time the 1980s rolled around, Colombia had already experienced almost three-and-a-half decades of incessant war, with the latest round being among the worst with no signs of the violence abating. "Hundreds of political dissidents and suspected rebel collaborators had been jailed and tortured by government troops," Dudley emphasizes, and adds that, "Many had died. The army had also launched attacks on rebel strongholds. Despite the government's resolve, the size of the guerrilla armies had increased fourfold."
Violent conflicts between Colombian government military forces and anti-government insurgent groups and outlawed paramilitary groups also worsened by the 1990s, fueled in large part by hefty funding by drug trafficking.
Today, although Colombian insurgents do not possess the military or popular support needed to successfully overthrow the Colombian government and violence has been on the decline for the past few years, the insurgent groups continue to launch attacks against the civilian population in Colombia and large regions of the countryside remain under guerrilla influence and outright control.
By the end of 2006, over 32,000 former right-wing paramilitaries had disbanded and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) had ceased operations, at least formally. Nevertheless, some insurgents continue to engage in criminal activities and in response, the Colombian Government has increased efforts to reassert government control throughout the country and this function is represented in all of the country's administrative departments (Colombia). Neighboring countries in the region, though, continue to express concern over the potential for violence spilling over their borders.
These were powerful events for the citizenry of Colombia, of course, and it is not surprising that they represented the focus of much of the art that emerged during this period as noted below.
WHERE
DOES INGRID BETANCOURT FALL in ALL of THIS? --a RECENT FAMOUS INCIDENT THAT BROUGHT the VIOLENCE in COLOMBIA to INTERNATIONAL EYES. WHAT ABOUT U.S. PRESENCE/INFLUENCE on THIS SITUATION?
Art and the Political Violence of 1948-1958 and the Revolutionary Violence of the 1960s - 1980s.
During this period of Colombia's history, an increasing number of artists began responding to the violent events that were engulfing their nation by expressing their angst in art. Powerful and poignant events in a nation's history require memorializing, and La Violencia provided rich fodder for the artists of the era. Indeed, this difficult time in Colombia's history produced a very intense movement in culture and arts in general; and writers such as Alvaro Mutis (b.1923), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (b.1927) and Leon de Greiff (1895-1976) came to the public light. Likewise, artists such as Alejandro Obregon, Fernando Botero (b.1932), Deborah Arango, Pedro Nel Gomez (1899-1984), and Luis Caballero (1943-1995), among others, began to use their work to denounce, protest, and/or criticize political and social injustice.
In this regard, Gloria Zea, Director of the Bogota Museum of Modern Art, points out that a number of Colombia artists have created artworks that deal specifically with violence as their theme, with some of the more prominent examples including Alejandro Obregon's Violence from the early 1960s, a work that represents the artist's appeal for more tolerance in an intolerant land. During this period in Obregon's career, a full half century of Colombian history and four generations had experienced the horrors of war which continued to rock the country during this period and were continuing to worsen.
While it is unlikely that all of the artistic works that were inspired by the historical violence in Colombia will be universally appreciated or even liked by people from all countries, it is apparent that everyone who comes into contact with these various artistic manifestations and interpretations of these violent periods in Colombia's history will be moved by them in fundamentally human ways that could not be achieved otherwise. As Zea
points out, "Violence has left an indelible imprint on Colombian culture. It is a recurring theme in the visual arts, literature, theatre and film. Given its magnitude, it has an enormous impact on our lives, and can leave no one indifferent."
Although contemporary, Juan Manuel Echavarria (b.1947) is another artist whose work relates to La Violencia. Through various video and still photographic works, Echavarria interpreted the 50-year period of civil war in Colombia via symbolic imagery. For instance, Echavarri's series of images entitled Corte de florero (Flower Vase Cut) 1996, assumes its distinctive form from various botanical prints that were inspired by the 18th century Spanish expeditions to the New World. Echavarri's illustrations of flowers, though, are not intended as a pleasant evocation of walks in a meadow but are rather constructed from actual human bones in an effort to draw attention to body mutilation as a tangential reference to this early period in Colombian history and his other work is likewise drawn from the history of Colombian cultural life.
Although a precise determination of the economic impact of decades' of violence on Colombia may be difficult to develop and predictions concerning where the country will be a decade from now vary, the impact of the incessant violence in human terms can be discerned in some general ways by the response of the artistic community to these events, and these issues are discussed below as they relate to Alejandro Obregon, Deborah Arango and others as well as their work during the first three phases of Colombia's violent history delineated above.
Case of study No. 1: Alejandro Obregon. Obregon, as well as many other Colombian artists at that time, was strongly affected by the violence, as well as the political and social disorder that Colombia experienced during La Violencia. In 1948, Obregon was living in Bogota where he was arranging for an exhibition of his work when he first learned of the assassination of Gaitan. This was clearly a formative event for Obregon as it provided him with some poignant first-hand experience concerning the tumultuous period and the fear that followed hard on the heals of this political assassination and the very next day in a cemetery, he completed the first sketches of La massacre del 10 de abril (the April 10th Massacre) 1948 and other paintings.
According to Williams and Guerrieri, Obregon belonged to the "Group of Barranquilla." The Barranquilla group was ". . . A gathering of intellectuals who read and discussed Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Dos Passos."
The group was absolutely replete with luminaries of the Colombia humanities scene. For instance, "During the 1940s and 1950s, the writer Jose Felix Fuenmayor (1885-1966) functioned as a literary father figure for the group of young artists and intellectuals later to be designated as the 'Group of Barranquilla.'"
This group also included the painter Alejandro Obregon, writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Alvaro Cepeda Samudio (1926-1972), journalist Alfonso Fuenmayor (1927-1992), and journalist/critic German Vargas.
One of the group's periodicals, the Barranquilla newspaper El Heraldo, also played an important role in Colombian coastal culture since the 1940s by regularly publishing the writing of Garcia Marquez and other members of the group.
In addition, the Barranquilla group also produced the literary journal, Cronica.
In reality, Obregon's art has characteristically been aligned with both the figurative and the abstract nature of the events he portrays. For instance, an artist from the Caribbean who was frequently been associated with Garcia Marquez's "Group of Barranquilla" in the 1940s, Pedro Nel Gomez, suggests that Obregon aspired not only to universalize Colombian painting, but also to move it in directions beyond the social message and the nationalism of the previous generation. From Obregon's perspective, though, his predecessors had been too concrete in the expression of their social concerns while concomitantly being too restricted in their expression of nationalism. Indeed, during the 1950s, a generalized reaction against the 'Bachue' group and the work of Pedro Nel Gomez began to take shape.
(See Mural by Alejandro Obregon in Barranquilla at the appendix.) This mural depicts an ordinary human being, presumably one of the countless victims of the incessant violence in Colombia, being chased by a relentless demonic figure in ways that reflect, perhaps, the collective social conscious of the Colombian people as they have sought to outrun the violence that surrounds them.
The abstractions created by Obregon are consistently characterized by bright colors and are evocative of the many of the positive, natural aspects that mark the Latin American landscape. Not surprisingly, this artist has achieved a well-deserved reputation as one of the painting masters in Latin America as one among many. In this regard, Williams and Guerrieri add that, "His work can be associated with the 'magic realism' of the Garcia Marquez generation in literature."
The career of Obregon developed over time in what can be somewhat arbitrarily divided into four distinct periods as follows.
The first two periods of Obregon painting career (i.e., 1944-1948 and 1949-1954) concerned the artist's initial training in the mere technical aspects of his medium as well as his attempts to define his own distinctive style. One of the more poignant works from the first period of Obregon's career was Masacre del 10 de Abril (1948) which depicts several ephemeral images of disembodied ghost-like faces and human appendages hovering over what appears to be a dead child killed in the massacre of the same date painted in dark blues, grays and black (see image at the appendix). Likewise, Obregon's painting entitled, "Estudiante muerto (the Dead Student, also known as the Wake)," is highly abstract but is rendered primarily in reds with smatterings of yellows, green and purple, but these colors belie the primary thrust of the work which depicts a mutilated body supinely postured on a table surrounded by artistic elements intended to convey the elusiveness of a peace that never came for this victim until the end. Obregon's aptly entitled, "La Violencia" (1962) is just as stark but not as colorful as "The Wake," and depicts a female victim of the this period in Colombia's history arranged in the same fashion as the student in "The Wake" (lying with her head at the left of the work), her distended bowels suggesting a corpse that has been left to rot where she was slain. This work is rendered in whites, grays and black and contains just enough elements of the human body to communicate the horrors of dying without reason for no legitimate purpose.
WHY
IS it DIVIDED INTO 2 PERIODS?. During the penultimate phase of his career from 1955-1967, Obregon reached his full maturity as an artist in terms of gaining widespread appeal and honing his ability to communicate his concepts of the impact of violence on the human condition through his art; it was also during this third phase that he assumed the status as the most influential painter in Colombia, using a style that is very particular to the individual artist himself. For instance, in his work, "Death to the human beast" (1982), Obregon depicts a gun-carrying male human torso that is in the process of being disemboweled and beheaded, with blood spurting and the smoke and haze of the battlefield surrounding it. In contrast to the more subdued qualities of his paintings from the earlier stages of his career, this painting (see image at the appendix) is replete with blood-red on white, but still contains elements of the black and grays that were characteristic of his earlier works. According to Williams and Guerrieri, Obregon's style became clearly recognizable as his own.
During the fourth and final period of his career from 1968 to the 1990s, Obregon's work did not have the same impact in the Americas, and his painting was considered less significant in Colombia as well. Nevertheless, he continued to work with many of the themes and techniques; however, during this final stage of his career, Obregon's work lacked the boldness and energy that typified his work during the 1950s and 1960s.
Nevertheless, some of Obregon's works during the later stages of his career were bold and energetic by any definition. For example, his undated (and world-famous) engraving "La Violenca," as well as his paintings, "Galan's Scream" (1977), "Genocide" (also undated) and "Raped" (1973) are highly characteristic of the reds, black, and greys that are seen in his earlier works. All of these works reflect the violence that was taking place in Colombia during the latter half of the 20th century and, notwithstanding their abstract qualities, provide a "window between worlds" for the citizens of Colombia and an international community that appeared to be disinterested in their plight.
Colombian artists entered into a nationalist and indigenous phase (identified as the "Bachue" movement) in the 1930s under the influence of the new Mexican art forms that had emerged from the Mexican Revolution. Like some other social movements of the era, the Bachue movement was not so much an organized effort as it was a fortunate happenstance of like-minded intellectual and artistic individuals who found themselves thrust together during this turbulent period in Colombia's history. For example, according to Troyan, assistant professor in the department of history at State University of New York-Cortland in New York with primary research interests in ethnic movements, indigenismo, and citizenship in 20th century Colombia, "The Bachue members' aim was to create an authentic and nationalistic culture while avoiding the pitfalls of European fascism. The Bachue group was not a cohesive organization but rather a gathering of loosely connected intellectuals who were exploring issues of national identity from very different angles and perspectives."
HOW DID THEY EXPLORE ISSUES of NATIONAL IDENTITY? NAMES of ARTISTS? IMAGES? DATES? In their capacity WHO
WHICH ARTISTS? As witnesses, interpreters and mediators of life in Colombia, Troyan suggests that, "An important contribution that the Bachue group made was to question the negative portrayal and representation of indigenous peoples and heritage that prevailed in Colombia in the 1930s."
As noted above, among these artists, the most prominent was Pedro Nel Gomez (1899-1984), known primarily as a muralist painter dedicated to nationalist and indigenous themes which are consistently cast in the role of a critic of social issues and his murals are prominently displayed in and on numerous public buildings in Medellin. While not related to the issue of violence in Colombia per se, the efforts by the Bachue group helped to develop "an authentic and nationalistic culture" that would provide the framework for the artists who followed. One of Gomez's recent murals in the Medellin Museum, "el Problema del Petroleo y la Energia" (2006), for example, shows the Colombian people struggling to cast off yet another yoke, this time the chains of oppression as represented by the country's dependence on fossil fuels (see image at the appendix).
During the 1930s and 1940s, Gomez was regarded as being an innovator of sorts, just as some other artists of the same period were regarded, with the examples of the drawer Ignacio Gomez Jaramillo and the sculptor Luis Alberto Acuna being preeminent among these. Gomez, Gomez Jaramillo, and Acufia regarded themselves as being active participants in a new "universal" movement in art that was also taking place during this period in Colombia's history in architecture. These individuals sought to have their creations to be fundamentally Latin American in their themes; however, their work quickly became widely regarded as simply exemplifying the indigenous art of Colombia that was characterized by excessively strong nationalistic overtones. Things were set to change in substantive ways in the second half of the 20th century, though. In this regard, Williams and Guerrieiri note that the work of the Bachue group ". . . was basically quite traditional in form and technique. A truly modernist spirit in art, however, emerged in Colombia during the 1940s and 1950s with the introduction of the works of Alejandro Obregon, Enrique Grau, Edgar Negret, and Eduardo Ramirez Villamizar."
Clearly, the stage had been set for artists such as Alejandro Obregon to become influential internationally and to draw attention to the violence that was taking place in Colombia through art.
Nevertheless, Obregon's work cannot be considered to be strictly political in theme or an expression of a specific ideology. In this regard, Jaramillo emphasizes that first and foremost, Obregon's ". . . work establishes a reading from a plastic point-of-view. Marta Traba, one of his greatest admirers who stated he was the one who started modern painting in Colombia, referred to his work Violence in this way; "It is an idea which has resulted in painting. This is why the term 'committed work' does not correspond to it at all, since this is the name given to painting which makes a commitment with something which is different from itself."
The inextricable relationship between the violence that wracked Colombia during this period and the art that was produced by is made Obregon is made apparent time and again in the scholarly literature. Certainly, Obregon was not the only artist of the moment to attempt to capture these tumultuous events in art, but he does represent one of the better known examples today. Another preeminent artist that sought to communicate the horrors of violence in her works was Deborah Arango who is discussed further below.
Case of study No. 2: Deborah Arango. According to art historian, David Manzur, the mid-20th century was a period in which nations such as Colombia remained in a dynamic state of flux, and the Colombian artistic community was likewise in a state of evolution. In a career that spanned four-fifths of a century, Arango was a prolific artist who created numerous works that frequently focused on the challenges and indignities she experienced personally as a female in a rigidly Roman Catholic country.
According to Forero, Arango "made dramatic paintings of prostitutes, which shocked midcentury sensibilities, and one of a woman giving birth in prison. Though a product of a traditional, affluent family from the Antioquia province of Colombia, Ms. Arango produced work that pushed the bounds of decorum, vividly touching on delicate and troubling subjects like Colombia's political violence, poverty and brutality."
Arango's painting, "La republica" (1953), for example, depicts in somber tones of brown, tan and black what appears to be a stylized dog of war holding a dove representing an elusive peace over the figure of a nude women being pecked at by vultures while a chorus of onlookers veers away from the grisly scene on each side. Two hands hold yet more animals which appear to be waiting their turn at feasting on the corpse. Likewise, Arango's work, "La danza" (1948) features a prominent grim reaper-type skeletal figure clad in a red cloak in the center of the painting holding a stylized scythe, carried by yellow-highlighted torch-bearing skeletons who are clad in blue cloaks (see images at the appendix). This painting appears to communicate the "dance of death" that was taking place throughout the Colombian countryside during this period in the country's history. Another of Arango's works entitled, "Masacre del 9 de abril" (1948) portrays humans seeking refuge in a church and its steeple only to be slaughtered in the process. This painting contains numerous stylized images of military-like characters who appear to be armed with rifles with bayonets fixed, but they are also being inexorably consumed by the waves of violence that are depicted in the central bottom of the work.
In Arango's painting, "Huelga de estudiantes" or "Student Strike" from 1957, the artist portrays a fatigues-clad figure with a red cap being crucified while spear-brandishing figures cheer his death on. Leaflets are being blown about in this painting, and banners are strung over and around the unfortunate crucified figure in the center (see images at the appendix). Death is also the central focus of Arango's painting, "La salida de Laureano o 13 de junio," where a skeleton bearing a skull and crossbones flag leads a funeral procession for a frog-like creature borne on an impromptu stretcher being carried by indistinct blue figures. On each side of the procession are military symbols, including a line of three soldiers to the right, with a line of cannonade to the left and a military officer carrying a rifle in the rear of the procession. Standing behind the cannonade, a crowd of primary colored citizens complete with a priest and monks cheers the procession on, clearly celebrating the death of the figure on the stretcher (see image at the appendix).
Like Obregon, Arango was not afraid to challenge the authoritative figures she blamed for the incessant violence that was ruining her beloved country. Arango was from a very large family being just one of 12 children, but still managed to gain access to an education in art, beginning her academic career at the age of 13 years at a strict Catholic school in Medellin and subsequently at Medellin's Instituto de Bellas Artes.
By 1935, Arango started her collaboration with the aforementioned Pedro Nel Gomez. These encounters with prominent artists and her personal experiences with violence in Colombia would shape Arango's work throughout her life. During this period in Western history in general and Colombian history in particular, it is clear that Arango was in the vanguard of change. In fact, as early as 1939, Arango thumbed her artistic nose at traditional conventions of the day when women were not supposed to compete with male artists by exhibiting her works in Antioquia with recognized male artists and again in 1940, when, following an exhibition of her works in Bogota, the newspaper El Siglo suggested that her works "constitute a true attack against the culture and artistic tradition of our capital city,"
an observation that undoubtedly delighted the artist at the time.
Although she never painted murals, Arango nevertheless drew significant inspiration from the muralist movement of Mexico and as a result, "She did paint large, trying to hammer her message with broad, thick brushstrokes. Her subjects inhabited the seamy side of small-town life: drunken men leaving a bar, a woman roughed up by policemen, an emaciated child in a mother's arms."
According to Fernando Botero, one of Colombia's best known artists, Arango's work was a "brazen language" that was not "preoccupied with aesthetics. What was central was expressing herself."
This expression was not restricted to the political powers in charge of the country, either, and Forero suggests that some of her targets were "best left alone" in an "isolated, provincial country in the 1940's and 50's. What she saw as hypocrisy in the church became an important subject for her. In one famous painting, Ms. Arango portrayed a group of nuns circling a caged bird, a cardinal. In another, a boxcar is filled with bodies, a reminder of the relentless political violence that has marked Colombia for decades."
Not afraid to attack the political powers-that-were as well, though, Arango also frequently devoted her work to issues of race and poverty, as well as corrupt leaders. For example, quoting Alberto Sierra, curator of the Museum of Antioquia in Medellin and an expert on Ms. Arango's work, Forero writes, "She was capable of condemning. Politically, Debora was a voice of protest as things were unfolding. A lot of artists wait and portray events after they happened."
Although Arango's works were initially rejected by the establishment, as it were, over time her works began to be popularly received together with artists such as Botero and writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Productive and sharp until almost the very end of her life, Arango managed to paint until her age-related infirmities prevented her from working any longer. In time, Arango was formally recognized by the very establishment that she sought to criticize and in 2003, she was awarded the Cruz de Boyaca, Colombia's most important honor.
Undoubtedly, Arango would have wanted to capture more of the events that were transpiring during the closing decades of the 20th century, but other artists took up where Arango left off and these issues are discussed further below.
Terroristic and Narcotic Violence in the 1980s and 90s.
The last decades of the 20th century witnessed a new generation of artists who were still confronted with violence, but some of the violence these artists experienced was of a different type but with the same bloody outcomes involved. Besides the traditional political conflicts, the drug and narcotics traffic war made its debut. In the 1980s, narcotics trafficking became a multi-billion dollar illicit business in Colombia and by the closing decade of the 20th century, the internal war between cartels, together with the Colombian government and paramilitary forces' efforts brought violence once again to communities in Colombia's main cities that for almost two decades had enjoyed some degree of safety.
According to a study by Roskin, a professor of political science at Lycoming College, Pennsylvania as well as a visiting professor of foreign policy in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College from 1991 to 1994, "Imagine a country where the state is so weak it cannot do the minimum things a state must do -- exercise sovereignty, the quality of being boss on its own turf, able to control unruly elements -- and offer citizens a modicum of security and order. In such a country, politics, because it is unrestrained, easily turns violent. Crime, because it has little to fear from the state, ignores state power, intermingles with politics, and eats into state power. We need not look far for such a country."
The country in question, the author points out, is Colombia. Equating the ruthless competition over scarce resources in Colombia with the observations made by Thomas Hobbes, Roskin adds that, "Colombia is a feast for Hobbesians in the rawness of its connections between crime and politics, a rawness that long antedates Colombia's massive drug industry and the way it feeds the massive U.S. drug appetite. Drugs may be the ultimate product of globalization."
Just as with all other countries, violence in Colombia can generally be divided into three broad categories: (a) political violence (e.g., guerrilla conflict, paramilitary conflict, political assassinations, armed conflict between political parties); (b) economic violence (e.g., street crime, carjacking, robbery/theft, drug trafficking, kidnapping, trafficking in humans); and (c) social violence (e.g., interpersonal violence such as spouse and child abuse, sexual assault of women and children) -- each identified in terms of the type of motivation that consciously or unconsciously uses violence to gain or maintain power.
Of course, the categories of violence are not mutually exclusive, as the kidnapping of an executive, for example, may be a political statement or a means of raising money for other purposes or drug trafficking can be used as a source of funding for terrorist activities that have a political basis.
However it is categorized, though, the incessant violence that has taken place in the country for the past several decades has contributed to the impoverished condition of Colombia in myriad ways that are reflected in the various artworks that continues to pour forth from native artists, and the subject matter is rife with poignant qualities that transcend national borders. While some observers might question the "good taste" of presenting such images in contemporary works of art, the fact remains that these are real issues affecting real people every day in Colombia and the artists discussed herein have sought to communicate the immediacy and horrendous impact these events have had on the collective consciousness of the Colombian society, albeit in different ways and in different media. Clearly, then, the legacy left by the violence that has characterized life in Colombia for several decades has had a lasting impact that transcends the immediate events and consequences in ways that are difficult to fathom for people who have not actually experienced them. Complicating substantive positive reformation efforts, though, is the convoluted nature of the problem which has assumed complex qualities that defy simplistic solutions.
As noted above, while violence is violence from the victim's perspective, the source and rationale of the violence shifted over the years with drug-related violence being foremost among these sources.
While the violence that has adversely affected Colombia's economic and social progress over the past several decades has not been limited to this country alone, of course, the level of violence in Colombia appears to have been particularly high compared to neighboring countries in Latin American chiefly because of its strategic location and source as a major international supplier of narcotics.
During the past several decades, Colombian drug lords reaped billions and billions of dollars in profits; however, the economic consequences for the Colombian public at large has been even more enormous and it is in this capacity that art functions as a witness, interpreter and mediator of violence in Colombia. One clear path to economic success, if it can be defined in this fashion, has been drug trafficking in Colombia; this industry, combined with the violence associated with it, as well as the political turmoil that has wracked the country over the years, have combined into a potent, violence-laden social brew that makes any analysis of economic progress in Colombia even more complicated.
One of Alejandro's recent exhibitions entitled, "Iconofilla" (2000) was comprised of a series of short video segments that focuses on the day-to-day events that have shaped the contemporary Colombian mindset.
The exhibition begins with the commentary: "Good morning sweet images, I want to see more."
This exhibition, spanning an hour, provides a number of segmented features concerning the human eye. According to artist, writer, activist, curator and founding member of the REPOhistory artist's collective as well as Political Art Documentation and Distribution, Gregory Sholette, who is also an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Master of Arts in Arts Administration Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, "Some appear to be news clips or appropriated TV programs, while others are documentary footage possibly shot by the artists themselves. Among the shorts is a scene from a Colombian soap opera in which a bandaged woman falls in love with her handsome surgeon after he restores her sight. There are also groups of mourning mothers wearing enlarged photographs of their dead children who have been shot in street assassinations. A chubby boy is fit with a glass eye that inserts with a loud plop."
This adaptation of a new medium to the age-old issue of violence in Colombia suggests that artists seek to interpret violence in new ways but with the common theme of relentless and senseless violence.
Not content to restrict these works to the mundane, Iconofilla also featured segments that contained "spectral images of Mary and Jesus that appear in the bottom of coffee cups, on stained walls and even in the reflections of ice cream vendor's carts. The final startling but morbid episode is about a woman who proceeds to take several frame shop employees hostage after she discovers they have lost her family photograph. It concludes with the distraught woman shooting herself in the head."
It is clear that this evocative exhibition accomplished precisely what the artist intended, at least from Sholette's perspective: "Iconofilla made me think of the pleasures and sorrows of looking at, making and writing about art. It also made me think about my own gooey, ocular organ; for a moment I imagined it to be a secret betrayer -- a conspicuous parasite -- drawing me, and thousands like me, here to Havana for its own inscrutable purpose. Plop."
Two other influential artists who have dedicated their work to portraying the subject of violence in Colombia, among other themes, are Beatriz Gonzalez and Doris Salcedo who are discussed further below
Case of study No. 3: Beatriz Gonzalez. Colombian painting has become internationally recognized and increasingly prominent since the 1960s. Internationally renowned artists such as Beatriz Gonzalez have therefore had a global influence and increasingly, a global audience for their works.
According to Williams and Guerrieri, "After beginning a career in the mid-1960s using classical models, Beatriz Gonzalez has cultivated a variety of pop forms, using an entire gamut of materials, from wood and tin to esmalte (enamel). She has successfully employed used furniture as the frame for much of her work, as well as cloths of different textures."
Gonzalez, though, did not confine her artwork to a single medium, and has created a number of paintings that share violence and suffering as a common theme. For instance, in her work entitled, "Retratos Mudos" (1990), depicts a stern-faced male visage in the middle surrounded on both sides by others, all of whom appear to be in pain and oblivious to those next to them. Cast in shades of grays, black and muted whites, "Retratos Mudos" is a clear commentary on the silent suffering that many Colombians have experienced over the last several decades, and suggests, perhaps, the isolation that goes hand in hand with people who are too afraid to embrace their neighbor for fear they may become the next victims in the long line of victims of violence in Colombia.
Likewise, in her work entitled, "Matame a mi que yo ya vivi" (1997), Gonzalez depicts a solitary female figure who is clad in a simple blue cloth dress that is adorned with a pattern of a lighter shade of blue tears. In this painting, the woman clasps her hands over her mouth in what appears to be a shocked expression at what she is seeing, set against a horizontally striped background of green, yellow and blue segments that serve to form a landscape of what is presumably the Colombian rural countryside. Similarly, in her more colorful painting entitled, "Poblacion Civil" (1997), another solitary figure, this time painted in vibrant shades of yellow and suggestive of Rodin's "The Thinker" but clearly despondent rather than pensive, sits with head in hand against a backdrop of what appears to be an orange setting sun. In front of the figure are strewn abstract representations of everyday artifacts that suggest such a frame of mind is an everyday occurrence for this unfortunate and is perhaps intended to convey the mindset that characterizes the violence-plagued "everyman" of the Colombian population but these concepts are not expressly communicated but are rather left to the viewer to interpret (see images at the appendix).
This ambiguity of the artistic message is not restricted to these works either. For instance, in her review of Gonzalez's exhibition, "What an Honor to Be With You at This Historic Moment,"
art critic Cotter reports that, "Multiculturalism is a complicated phenomenon, both sweet and bitter. During the last decade, artists and even whole cultures once excluded from mainstream consideration have gained admission, however tentative, to the contemporary art market controlled by the United States and Europe."
This "colonialization" of Latin American art has resulted in some constraints on the marketability of the art that is being produced at any given point in time. In this regard, Cotter suggests that even the title of the exhibition, "What an Honor to Be With You at This Historic Moment," reflects the tone of Ms. Gonzalez's figurative painting: "Wry, mock-formal, hiding reserves of emotion behind a hard-to-read public face. Ambiguity is everywhere: in images that mix tabloid dramas with canonical art icons; in a homely-pretty painting style, and in her own half-defiant, half-resigned description of her work as 'an underdeveloped painting for underdeveloped countries.'"
In an "art is in the eye of the beholder" type of analysis, Cotter adds that the "What an Honor" exhibition is yet another artistic endeavor that builds on Gonzalez's figurative paintings that date to the late 1960s in which the artist has depicted in various ways the theme of violence in Colombia. For instance, according to Cotter, "The painting is one of a number from the late 1960's in which Ms. Gonzalez explored the pervasive violence of Colombian society. In the same years, she produced an extraordinary series of ink drawings on the same theme. Some derive from tabloid photos of crimes of passion and political murders, others from advertisements for bodybuilding and headache cures. Significantly, in Ms. Gonzalez's hands, the two types of images are rendered all but indistinguishable."
With Los suicidas del Sisga,, and according to Marta Traba, her career's most evident point of departure, Gonzalez incorporated into her work two elements that would resurface recurrently throughout her career: the topic of death and the reinterpretation of what Carolina Ponce de Leon calls "the visual repertoire of everyday images found in newspapers and popular magazines."
The total group of paintings and drawings presented by Gonzalez at the Fondo Cultural Cafetero entitled Dolores, Obra reciente (Pains. Recent Works), along with the wall paper and the park benches presented at Galeria Sextante, could be interpreted as a preoccupation for reflecting on the iconography of death which has a long tradition in Gonzalez's works.
In these last two exhibits, "What at Honor" and "Los suicidas del Sisgas," the themes are also linked to the manner in which the print media in Colombia has constructed a visual code concerning violent death as well as the expression of the pain that inevitably follows such events. According to this reviewer, "In this sense, the large-format oil paintings such as Dolores (Pains), Empalizada (Palisade), and Ventana entreabierta (Window Ajar) could be interpreted within Gonzalez's preoccupation with the rituals of grief as protagonized by the families of the violently deceased. By being captured by the mass media's visual logic, those rituals begin to turn into repetitive structures."
According to Cotter, this preoccupation with death is continued in a number of other pieces by the artist. For example, "In some works we find the casket and people weeping. In others, the corpses of those murdered en masse. In Predicadores (Preachers), for example, and contrary to what she's previously done, where the corpses of the murdered and their context are involved in a great chaos, Gonzalez has "rationally" presented three corpses in an orderly fashion: their faces covered, and their hands crossed over the chest. Precisely, the "logic" of the mass murderers, its brutal repetitive structure, is alluded ironically in the wall paper reproducing this piece at the Galeria Sextante."
In the same fashion that death in Colombia has a specific history, inextricably associated with the various ways in which the different combatants and protagonists have exchanged blows over the years, Cotter suggests that the same elements have wended their ways into Gonzalez's exhibitions. These violence-related themes are communicated in various ways, but the message that emerges from her work is clear in that violence is a disease that has infected the Colombian people for far too long and one that requires more than a band-aid to cure. In this regard, Cotter points out that, "Symbolically and physically, the enemy's extermination, violent death and the subsequent pain have created an iconography that Gonzalez has reinterpreted, rescuing their original intensity. Although these two exhibits do not show Gonzalez's intellectual, humorous, and corrosive gaze as we know it, they show us again the codes of pain and death forming in Colombia in the midst of a war that is already a half-century old. It seems that Gonzalez has lost her laughter, although she's still reflecting emotively on death."
One of the more intriguing and poignant elements of Gonzalez's works is the fact that the artist is not so much concerned with assigning blame or identifying who is at fault for 50 years of violence in Colombia as she is in communicating the universality of the consequences that go hand in hand with violence on this level and for such a lengthy period of time. For example, Cotter adds that, "As always, Ms. Gonzalez is less intent on assigning blame for deeds done -- almost impossible in this case -- than in suggesting that violence itself is an existential condition. And its power reverberates through all of her subsequent work, including a series of paintings from the early 1990's -- 'Island of the Good-Luck Rabbit' (1993) is an example -- in which male corpses dressed in suits and ties, float Ophelia-like in dark water. Whether their deaths were violent or accidental is uncertain, but they have all found a watery grave."
The consolidation of violent-related themes with other aspects of Latin American life found in Gonzalez's works is pointed out by Cotter as well. For instance, this reviewer reports that, "In the artist's most recent paintings of single female figures, politics, art history and the personal merge. The figures are adapted from two sources: Gauguin's exoticized images of Polynesian women and news photos [taken in 1997], of the distraught mothers of kidnapped Colombian soldiers."
Moreover, this merging of themes extends to the bright and colorful with the morbid as with the above-described "Poblacion Civil": "In two of the paintings, weeping brown-skinned women wear skirts decorated with scenes of a tropical paradise lost. In a third, the artist depicts herself, nude, her skin a deathlike blue, her hands covering her face as if she were peering through her fingers at things she could barely stand to see."
In this regard, Cotter notes that, "Ms. Gonzalez has called her painting 'a regional art that can't be recognized universally except as a curiosity.' And it does pose problems. Its determinedly rough, anti-academic painting style -- awkward forms, workaday surfaces -- will not be to all tastes. And its culturally grounded references can make its play of humor, despair and affection hard to interpret."
It is doubtful, though, that Gonzalez would be so much concerned that her art was universally regarded but would likely prefer that her underlying message was communicated concerning the futility of violence as a way of life and the adverse impact that such events can have on the victims as well as the larger society in which they exist. Another artist whose works focus on the ultimate impact of violence on average people is Doris Salcedo, whose works are discussed further below.
Case of study No. 4: Doris Salcedo. People are drawn to public places for a variety of reasons, including revisiting affective sites of trauma, as the poignant architectural work of the artist Doris Salcedo invariably communicates to her audiences. In sharp contrast to the works of Arango and Obregon, Salcedo's works are created from architectural and other ordinary elements that are combined in ways that seek to communicate the disenfranchisement of ordinary Colombian citizens from a country that is certainly not free of violence and turmoil. In one untitled work, for example, Salcedo impales stacks of neatly pressed white shirts on black spears. Describing this work, the artist provides the source of her inspiration for this piece: "The objects were molded from the experience of forty women who had witnessed their men being killed on their very doorstep ... The marks left behind by the violent act in these places are sometimes evident and sometimes imperceptible although, in any case, indelible."
Concerning this specific exhibit, writer and independent curator Cameron writes that:
Salcedo's clean white shirts (stiffened by an infusion of plaster) refer simultaneously to the domestic habits of the women who cared for these men, to the symbolic states of surrender and innocence applicable to all victims of violence, and to the solemn collective formality that marks the passage between life and death in all societies. In Colombia, men wear white shirts to funerals the way North Americans wear black suits. But though the work's meaning originates in the specific politics of Colombia, the sorrow and loss it evokes are recognizable across all borders.
In another exhibit entitled, "The Abyss," Salcedo created a work that consisted of a brick wall that is missing its lower, supporting rows of bricks, suggesting the theme of the victims missing as a result of the violence that has taken place in Colombia. Yet another work entitled, "Atrabiliarios" consisted in part of several wooden boxes stacked in the corner of a room, and another bearing the same titled is an installation work consisting of a series of wall-mounted squares made from timber, gypsum dry wall, cow bladder, shoes and surgical thread (see images at the appendix).
In a related essay by Cameron, the point is made that the artist ". . . lives in Colombia, a country lately plagued by violence both civil and governmental. As a subject of art, violence can easily be misunderstood, and Salcedo approaches it cautiously."
The cautiousness to which Cameron refers concerns deliberate efforts to communicate a profound sense of loss as a result of the violence in Colombia as with the missing bricks in "The Abyss" by emphasizing what is not there rather than what is. As Cameron puts it, "First, she tries to forestall either ideological or sensational misreadings of her work. Instead, her installations convey feelings of loss; they have a funereal aura. Salcedo knows that violence exerts itself not only as a destructive force that arrives and swiftly departs, but in the devastated months and years that may follow it."
While not explicitly a major theme in Salcedo's works, a tangential issue that emerges from her works is the fact that the people of other countries in general and the United States in particular tend to regard the violence in Colombia differently than the violence they themselves are causing throughout the world. Such hypocrisy finds little favor with Salcedo whose works trends national borders to capture a global audience. In this regard, Cameron notes that, "An incidental question her work poses is why we in the U.S. tend to dismiss the violence in Colombia as inexplicable, barbarous, or simply corrupt, while rationalizing the equally dehumanizing daily violence of North American cities as an unfortunate but manageable side-effect of the country's role on the world stage."
The "wounded furniture" that is part of Salcedo's work is set in interior spaces and is evocative of the missing presence of people who were once there. In this regard, Cameron suggests that, "Her battered furniture and unassuming architectural fragments contrast poignantly with the stark white of the gallery setting."
As noted above, many of the materials that Salcedo uses in her works are not exotic in composition or execution but are rather day-to-day artifacts of life everywhere that are used in unusual ways to communicate the artist's message. Concerning her exhibition, "Atrabilarios" (Defiant), Cameron suggests that while not exotic in appearance to audiences from other countries, her work is inextricably associated with the Colombian experience. For instance, her use of ordinary shoes was used as part of the Atrabilarios exhibition in 1991 in which the worn shoes were placed in rectangular spaces that were actually hacked out of the museum walls. The holes were covered with cow bladders that were sewn with oversized stitches using surgical thread. The impact of this exhibition might be lost on the casual observer, but a closer examination provides the viewer with an understanding of what Salcedo was seeking to achieve with the shoes-in-a-niche approach. In this regard, Cameron writes, "At first glance the work appeared disarmingly 'organic' and unthreatening; then one began to connect the shoes with their absent owners, and their owners with their fleshy containing cells or crypts. Some of the shoes had belonged to victims of violence, some had not; in either case, of course, their history wasn't evident from their appearance. Yet the installation conveyed a more precise sense of loss --its mundane objects led inevitably to the emotional chasm created by the body's absence."
To her credit, this artist does not just read about the impact of violence on the people of Colombia but actively seeks out victims and their families to help gain first-hand insights concerning their experiences that she uses in her art. Indeed, on a frequent basis, Salcedo visits Colombian villages in remote parts of the country in order to meet with the survivors of violence; in the majority of instances, these are ordinary people who have experienced first-hand the effects of violence in Colombia.
In her face-to-face meetings with these victims, Salcedo gains inspiration concerning how humans react to violence and what the effect of violence can be on ordinary people by ripping away what is important to them. For instance, the missing element as a theme was repeated in what Cameron describes as "Salcedo's most ambitious and successful work to date" which was a series of installations she named "La Casa Viuda" (the widowed house, 1994). According to Cameron, "The title -- referring not only to the house of the widow but to the house as widow -- is a Colombian phrase denoting a home whose inhabitants have been 'vanished' (taken away, perhaps killed), leaving behind a shell that preserves the evidence of day-to-day life intact."
During an installation of "The widowed house" at New York's Brooke Alexander gallery, the artist intentionally used empty space to create this sense of what was missing rather than what was present in this evocative fashion. As Cameron points out, Salcedo ". . . left the space largely empty to emphasize the contrast between the stark white of esthetic contemplation and the more self-effacing aura of simple, well-used places and things. A simple wooden chair stood in a doorway, set flush to its frame -- virtually flowing into its structure. Not only was the object fused with its context, but the artist had somehow integrated a skin of lace into the chair's substance, in a kind of visual magic realism suggesting the almost ghostly passage from real space and time into human memory."
Indeed, it was if Salcedo was bring a homeless person home to dinner with an unsuspected family who were prefer to not acknowledge that hungry people exist in the world while they were eating. It is this quality of Salcedo's works that provides a reminder of the countless and nameless victims of violence in Colombia. For example, Cameron emphasizes that, "Bringing us subtly closer to an intimate experience of violence, Salcedo restores the human element to a part of late-20th-century life that is often depersonalized. Victims of mass violence and displacement, particularly in third world countries, are frequently left unnamed, or are described through statistics, as if to assert the distance between the seemingly hostile, unsafe regions that we do not call home and the supposedly secure spaces from which we view them and their tragedies."
By emphasizing what is missing from these people's lives, Salcedo succeeds in interpreting their experiences for others who could not otherwise imagine -- or want to imagine -- what it must be like to be confronted with violence and its effects on a daily basis as part of ordinary life. Like the hungry-man-brought-to-dinner analogy, Salcedo's works are constant reminders of the plight of the victims of violence in Colombia in ways that only art can provide. Moreover, by using ordinary materials in her works, Salcedo ensures that everyone can relate to her exhibitions even if they may not recognize the underlying themes straight away. Slowly but surely, though, the message becomes loud and clear concerning the impact that violence can have on people just like the viewer who, but for the grace of God, would be represented in such a piece by Salcedo. In this regard, Cameron concludes that:
Salcedo focuses on the details of suffering -- but not for gratuitous ends, or even to remind us that tragedy has befallen someone we could be. Her ambition is greater than this: she accentuates the details of life and loss so as to enable us to occupy the place of a person whose experience is radically different from ours. And she makes it harder for us to distance ourselves from people elsewhere, stigmatized through suffering and loss. Violence is neither exoticized nor banalized in Salcedo's work, it is transformed into a study, even a parable, of how our own memories bear the trace of losses whose depths we have not begun to fathom.
Abstract in the extreme, these works can clearly mean different things to different people, but it would seem that the artist is seeking to bind the collective experiences of the Colombian people into a unified whole. This observation is congruent, at least, with the comparable point made by the editors of Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson, Allen and Turney report that Salcedo's ". . . passage into counter-memorial is a kind of mourning, a process that works by way of incorporation. Such a passage can make textural exposure something that binds. We are held there, in the material site of loss, in the traces of the fabric remnants that constitute the 'discarded garment' of recollection. But it is precisely this intimate holding in affective vicinity, in the architexture of loss, that can become a form of sustenance and a way of moving on with life. It is in this way that cineres turn into cinema."
As noted above, in its evolving capacity as a framework in which social and civic change can be effected, art continues to play an important role in shaping contemporary thought throughout Colombia today. Indeed, this was the thrust behind the exhibit entitled, "The Quiet in the Land," which was part of a series of projects that was initiated in 1995 by France Morin in a search for a way of working that would reaffirm the potential of contemporary artists as catalysts of positive social and political change. The following quotation is from Salcedo concerning her participation in the second part of series, started in 1997, entitled, "The Quiet in the Land: Everyday Life, Contemporary Art, and Projeto Axe": "This experience was very important for me. I am reminded of the words of Italo Calvino, who once said that he sees people who suffer and that he is populated by all of these people. The children I worked with will be with me forever. I saw the face of pain, how it acts and how it hurts. My work with the children was very, very intense."
According to her online biography, Doris Salcedo was born in 1958 in Bogota, Colombia, where the artist has assumed a leading role as a member of a new generation of artists who have achieved international acclaim in recent years, due in large part to her decision to remain in Colombia to live and work. The biography goes on to note that, "In Colombia, where Salcedo lives and works, the incidence of violent death has risen over the past fifty years to the point where it has become the primary threat to the social fabric. Although this violence does not discriminate between urban and rural victims, its most devastating effects can be witnessed in the less developed regions where Salcedo has traveled on a regular basis during the past decade."
The abstract qualities of Salcedo's works are perhaps the result of her reluctance to relive the painful experiences that inspired the works in the first place. In this regard, Morin advises, "Seeking out and interviewing the survivors of violence, the artist is completely absorbed in acting as a secondary witness to the event, to the point where it becomes impossible for her to even try and revisit or reconstruct the original traumatic act for us."
YOU
ARE QUOTING FROM a WEBPAGE? From Salcedo's perspective, the pain that has characterized life in Colombia over the years requires the artist to empathize in ways that may be beyond the ability of many, but nothing less will do for Salcedo:
I have come to meet people that have had the generosity of sharing with me their pain. Pain is constantly being revived. I think that allows for the establishment of another type of relation with reality. The distance between them and me disappears, allowing their pain to take over me, to take over my center. If I manage to make a good piece that circulates in the center of society, then their pain will enter into the core of this society. The victims will become the main protagonists (emphasis added)."
One of Salcedo's recent works entitled, "Unland" also uses architectural and everyday elements that are related, even if indirectly, to the events that have shaped the lives of the people she has met and whose stories she wishes to memorialize in her art. The work "Unland" consists of what appears to be an otherwise-ordinary wooden table that may provide some type of shelter but also appears to be distressed (see image at the appendix). In his catalogue essay for this exhibition, Charles Merewether confirms that Salcedo uses this approach in her works and details the effect of such encounters in Salcedo's work of the early 1990s: "Plates, clothing, buttons, zippers and bones are grafted, compressed, and compacted into the surfaces of pieces of furniture. Chairs are covered by a fine skin of lace as if seared into the wood, bones are embedded into the side of a cabinet, a spoon forced between the seams of wood of a kitchen bureau. We may say the furniture appears wounded, both physically and psychically."
The wounded qualities of Salcedo's works are described by professor of government at Georgetown University Eric Langenbacher as follows: "This globally resonant representational form, a wound cut into the earth, also informs the art of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo. Her Unland works against the destruction of the past, while simultaneously expressing skepticism regarding public memory and direct historical representation."
Like the homeless that many people would prefer to allow to go unacknowledged because they are an unpleasant reminder that all is not well with everyone, Salcedo brings these issues to the forefront by making people pay attention to victims of violence. For instance, according to Madeleine Grynsztejn, the Elise S. Haas senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, "At the heart of Doris Salcedo's work is the visual articulation of that which is so often unacknowledged or made invisible: the victim of violence, the refugee, the immigrant, the decimated domestic sphere, the disregarded social contact. Salcedo fashions a space in which these realities can be both recognised and legitimised."
As can be seen from the foregoing case studies, both Gonzalez and Salcedo, as well as a number of other contemporary Colombian artists, have focused their work on the human, intimate, and personal vision of the victims and survivors of violence.
Surviving Violence: A New Millennium
Today, Colombia is experiencing a period of rehabilitation that seeks to overcome its longstanding legacy of violence in ways that continue to use art to capture and memorialize the impact that these events have had on the ordinary citizens of the country. Indeed, in recent years, art has become a catharsis for ordinary people by showing them that their struggles and sacrifices have not been forgotten but have rather become the source of inspiration for meaningful change. In contrast to the past, though, these recent efforts have been truly multidisciplinary approaches that have enlisted the assistance of various professions to present images that seek to heal old wounds.
In this regard, performance art was used by Doris Salcedo in an attempt to commemorate and prevent a recurrence of the violence that took place three and a half decades ago in Colombia. According to Salcedo, "Some people call it the Holocaust at the Palace of Justice. November 6 and 7, 1985, were days that changed Colombia forever, the days in which impunity became entrenched in the official facade of democratic institutions and memory erased. No one knows exactly, but around 126 people died, including most of the country's Supreme Court." The outcome of this event was grisly and bloody by any measure, and it continues to reverberate through modern Colombia society in ways that demand commemoration and remembrance through art and numerous artists have stepped up to the plate to do just that. In this regard, Salcedo herself emphasizes that, "Despite desperate attempts by many, including the hostage judges themselves, to get the civilian government to negotiate with guerrillas who had taken the Palace of Justice by force, the Colombian Army immediately retaliated in a brutal way with bullets, bombs, and fire. The mostly one-sided battle lasted for two days. Few human remains were found. Nothing but ashes."
Something besides ashes did emerge from the bloody confrontation, though, and it is in this fashion that art serves as the vehicle by which these events in Colombia's history are not allow to be forgotten, or to fester in ways that would make their memory even worse than it is for many.
According to Salcedo herself, "In Colombia, in this most violent of times, we are forced to face the emptiness and the nothingness of the loss in war. The search for meaning focuses on the irrepressible activity of remembrance, which must begin with the inscription of the date in a work of art, if it is to endure. The work of art speaks even if none of its references are intelligible. Art speaks to the other; it addresses another issue altogether, even if it does not reach the person it is addressing."
From Salcedo's perspective, then, the main issue is that the message and its interpretation occurs between art and audience, an interpretation that may be subjective but one that is require in order to commemorate and memorialize the events portrayed and to evoke the powerful responses needed from the audience to do so.
In his photo-essay, "Shooting for Peace," photographer Alex Fattal reports that much like the Slumdogs' approach to capturing the true essence of a nation's problems through imagery, "Shooting Cameras for Peace (DCP) provides thirty new perspectives. Thirty displaced children squatting in Bogota's extreme outskirts, Altos de Cazuca, documented their lives with photographs and spoken narratives. The result is an intimate testimonial from children who do not know the extensive history of violence and vengeance they have been born into, only one of its most violent stages."
This initiative seeks to halt and reverse the ongoing cycle of violence by highlighting the incessancy of the problem from the perspective of young people who do not have a political axe to grind but have much at stake otherwise. In this regard, Fattal advises that the DCP seeks to break the pattern of violence in Colombia in different ways by providing young people with cameras who are then free to select what aspects of life in their communities are reflective of their own personal experiences with violence in ways that empower them to confront and then overcome this relentless cycle.
The success of this project has clearly demonstrated that art in whatever form it assumes can play a powerful role in mediating the violence that has wracked this country for decades, and suggests that the social condition of downtrodden people can be ameliorated, at least to some degree, by capturing and highlighting images that reflect these events. According to Roca's essay, still other artists in Colombia have used natural materials such as botanicals to commemorate the historical violence that has characterized life in Colombia and which continues to keep the country from realizing its full potential.
Citing the adverse effects of imperialistic practices by giant conglomerates, Roca reports that, "Jose Alejandro Restrepo has turned to video language to establish the historical genealogy of the violence within a continent that was colonized through the use of force."
In Musa Paradisiaca (1993-1996), an artistic exhibition that incorporates bunches of bananas together with video news clips, Restrepo conveys the powerful links between violence and ". . . The image of the tropics as a terrestrial paradise, an exuberant and exotic America both in natural and sexual ways."
One of the harsh realities of attempting to introduce social change through urban renewal efforts is the fact that countless disenfranchised people becomes even more disadvantaged when their homes, albeit poor, are demolished in the name of progress. This has certainly been the case in the barrios of Bogota where attempts to eliminate one evil have frequently been the cause of yet another. In this regard, in his essay, "Displacing the gaze," Jose Roca (n.d.) emphasizes that, "Radical urban transformation in the name of hygiene, security and progress included razing whole neighborhoods (including the infamous 'El Cartucho' in Bogota -a haven for arms and drug dealing just a few blocks from the Presidential house) in order to build open parks and plazas for the people."
An image of El Cartucho prior to its razing is shown in the figure at the appendix.
While this initiative would appear to be progress by any measure, like numerous other social engineering initiatives, this approach also has its drawbacks. For instance, Roca adds that, "Progress has its dark underside in the form of the forced displacement of those who had been led by poverty and circumstances to occupy the streets: evicted from them, they have been twice displaced."
From this perspective, even if ordinary citizens have managed to escape the direct effects of violence in Colombia, they remain victims nevertheless of social and political forces that have kept them situated squarely in places where violence does seem to breed and from which they are unable to escape. Likewise, Jose Roca reports that, "Main cities in Colombia are in a constant flux, as they receive (but also produce) displacement: slums have been created by people leaving rural areas to escape the confrontation between leftist guerrillas and the paramilitary, and by those seeking better opportunities."
These social forces have created an environment wherein citizens in Colombia are compelled to operate outside the formal economy and create their own opportunities where they can.
Even the most well intentioned efforts by officials in these communities frequently are misguided because they fail to take into account the bottom-line impact that these initiatives will have on the very people they are designed to help. For example, Roca emphasizes that, "Progress has its dark underside in the form of the forced displacement of those who had been led by poverty and circumstances to occupy the streets: evicted from them, they have been twice displaced. In many cases, urban planning has not been accompanied by social programs to relocate these people, which has meant an increase in homelessness, people that wander through the city, living off the detritus of urban activity."
By being forced to remain in impoverished conditions with little opportunity to escape, these unfortunates continue to be at the mercy of those who would prey on them in violent ways. Clearly, poverty and violence go hand in ways that require a multifaceted approach to remedy, and art represents just one of these facets of these harsh realities.
In a society such as Colombia where the slang word for homeless people is "desechables" (disposables) and killings of indigents are typically referred to as "social cleansing," an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of their existence has obvious political implications which is where artist Wilson Diaz's work is particularly important. In this regard, Diaz's work has consistently been concerned with timely social issues that are based on a highly personal, what Roca suggests is an "almost intimate" perspective. According to Roca, Diaz has sought to transcend the generic face society places on the deviant individual (i.e., the guerrillero, the homeless) by transforming these people into virtually abstract entities in an effort to avoid having to invest any emotional empathy with them in a process that manages to avoid even acknowledging their existence because to do so would be disquieting and uncomfortable for the observer. In this regard, Roca notes that the short video presentation entitled, Bano en el canito, illustrates a group of very young men bathing themselves and each other in a stream in ways that clearly humanizes them. According to Roca, "The video was shot in the context of the Peace Talks led by the previous president, where various participants (clergy, intellectuals, artists, ONG's) were allowed to enter the demilitarized zone to act as independent witnesses of the process. The video establishes an alternative approach to the mythologized figure of the guerrillero as a ruthless, rugged killer and shows its humane dimension with all its contradictions."
Other Colombian artists have adopted comparable techniques in their portrayal of the downtrodden victims of poverty and violence in an "in-your-face" type of approach to communicating the anguish that goes hand-in-hand with these afflictions on the human condition but using new media rather than traditional painting or engravings for their work. For instance, Roca advises that a comparable technique was used by Jaime Avila in his photographic series entitled, "Lie is a catwalk." This series is exemplified by unusual camera angles that always are pointed up rather than down in an effort to avoid "looking down" on the subjects portrayed in the photographs.
Yet another artist, Rodrigo Facundo, has focused on the artifacts of the homeless as they go about their daily lives eking out an existence on the streets in ways that create a powerful message for his audiences. In this regard, Roca notes that:
Rodrigo Facundo's photographs of the makeshift carts used by the homeless in their daily travels through the city are presented almost in a sculptural fashion, devoid of their context, with colored backgrounds as if they were objects of design and thus of desire. The images strive to make the viewer focus of the extreme detail and visual sophistication these objects have while keeping in mind the dangers any taxonomy embodies: placing the other at a distance from 'us,' broadening the gap that separates 'them' from ourselves. These works acknowledge the role of public space as the place for contradictions to arise; an emphatic gaze is sometimes all that is desired rather than turning away from the problem, as most of us would prefer. Sometimes, not even that will do.
Likewise, in his essay, Roca also notes that, "For artists who see us from outside, coming face-to-face with the 'reality of Colombia' has always meant a conscious operation of resistance to what constitutes the stereotype of the country (drugs, violence), which -like all stereotypes- is an out of context exaggeration of real, unquestionable facts."
While the citizenry of major cities may experience inordinately high levels of violence of one sort, the genocidal acts that have taken place elsewhere in the country may appear as surrealistic by virtue of their physical separation and portrayal in the media. For example, along this line of reasoning, Roca emphasizes that, "That has meant that the experience of the conflict people in a city like Bogota have is not essentially different from what people outside might have, in the sense that there is no real, firsthand experience of the massacres, the attacks on the infrastructure and the sieges of towns; those events are not lived as local ones, but are perceived almost exclusively through the media, in particular television."
Indeed, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States, television stations across the country were requested by the U.S. federal government to cease broadcasting images of the jetliners impacting the World Trade Centers time and again because of the disturbing nature of these pictures and the adverse emotional impact they were having on the nation's citizenry. The same process is taking place in Colombia today, though, in ways that also carry a high emotional toll. As Roca points out, "Even through the media there are obviously great differences between perceiving the Colombian war from outside and from inside, above and beyond the absence of context. One of the essential differences between perception of the Colombian conflict through the international and local media is the intensity with which violent images are presented in the local news broadcasts: a constant bombardment of images associated with the internal war which has generated, through overload, a gradual numbing of the Colombian public to the images of the conflict."
This "gradual numbing" appears to be part of the coping process that many Colombians undergo just as a matter of survival. For instance, former Harvard Law School and current Yale Law School faculty member Julieta Lemaitre reports that she was "Ghettoized" into her barrio, where, "I grew up in a city I never experienced. Although men were not everywhere, any street, corner, park or barrio that was not proven to be safe was unsafe by definition. While my carefree male friends rode on their bikes and explored the city, I stayed in my barrio, my school, my home."
Lemaitre also stresses the need for her and her friends to remain in known "safe zones" during their daily routine in order to avoid the lecherous pedophilic males the lurked around her neighborhood in Colombia when she was growing up. According to this author:
My mother is 53 and she still lives in Cartagena, my hometown. As far as I know, she has never wandered alone far from the same familiar streets that held me in as a child. The city she knows is only the safe one and the same is true for her mother, grandmother, and all of our female friends. We knew our city from afar, down the proven safe roads and from the window of a bus. Any new place was unsafe until proven otherwise. When I grew up and traveled to other cities, I stuck to this same rule: any public road or park was unsafe until proven otherwise. This unwritten travel advisory had been ingrained in my body since I was ten.
It is little wonder, then, that many Colombian artists have not only focused on presenting the grainier side of life in Colombia in their works, but also have sought to shock and even offend with their works in order to serve as a witness, interpreter and mediator of these events in ways that can overcome this "gradual numbing" effect. Likewise, it is little wonder that these works are perceived differently by audiences in Colombia and abroad. The relation of art to the dominant culture is certainly the focus of a recent public art project, "The Skin of Memory," which is discussed further below.
Case of study No. 5: Public Art Project: La piel de la memoria (the Skin of Memory). When employment and educational opportunities are limited, it is not surprising that many young people turn to a life of crime in order just to survive and this has been the case with youngsters in some of Colombia's larger urban settings in recent years. For example, according to the exhibit's sponsors and principal organizers, Lacy and Riano-Alcala, "Medellin is the second-largest city in Colombia, with a population of 2.3 million. In the 1980s, it became the strategic center for the operations of the powerful Medellin drug cartel, undergoing a dramatic social transformation. Youth, in particular, joined gangs, became sicarios (hired assassins) or part of an underground network of illegal services for organized crime."
Although there are several types of violence that can afflict a nation, Lacy and Riano-Alcala make it abundantly clear what type of violence has wracked Colombia in recent years. For example, the exhibit's organizers report that, "Death statistics and victim profiles changed dramatically during the 1980s: homicide victims were now mostly men (90%) between thirteen and twenty-four years old. Colombia had become one of the most violent countries in the world. By 1991, Medellin's homicide rate reached 381 per 100,000 people."
The proliferation of guerrilla and paramilitary groups likewise had an enormous effect on regional violence. Across the country, two leftist guerrilla groups (i.e., the FARC [Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia] and the ELN [Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional]) experienced steady increases in their ranks, the amount of territory they controlled as well as the subversive activities in which they engaged; likewise, paramilitary groups with right-wing affiliations, grew in numbers as well using funds providing by affluent landowners and drug cartels to spread violence in the form of massacres and forced displacement. Indeed, some of these groups even had direct links with members of the Colombian army.
In an effort to further their investigation of the enormous social and psychic impact that urban violence in Medellin has exacted on its citizens, Riano-Alcala invited the artist Suzanne Lacy WHY LACY? EXPLAIN
to collaborate on an exhibition that was intended to transcend and explore the divisiveness that has characterized life in Medellin. In this regard, art critic, editor and curator Patricia Phillips phrases it, "To develop a collaborative project to transgress deep divisions and to reactivate memory as a relational and recuperative resource in a fractured city."
The methodology of the project, La piel de la memoria, was straightforward and was based on using empirical observations and reports of young people who were dispatched throughout Medellin to gather individual stories of loss and fear and to secure artifacts that were evocative of the memories of these events. The end product, Phillips notes, was an "eclectic archive that resulted was assembled in an altered bus that traveled through the deeply divided neighborhoods of barrio Antioquia, bringing together members of the public--witnesses -- often for the first time, in rare moments of reconciliation."
According to a report by Lacy and Riano concerning the exhibition, "The Skin of Memory" is a good example of artists interpreting and memorializing violence so that its victims will not be forgotten in an effort to prevent its recurrence in the future and these authors report, "The project La piel de la memoria brought together the public-art vision of the artist Suzanne Lacy and the research and community work of the anthropologist Pilar Riano. It responded to local needs and situations influenced by specific global forces, using art, ritual, and commemoration."
The project in question was conducted during 1998-1999 in Medellin's Antioquia barrio (see image at the appendix), a setting selected based on his legacy of disenfranchisement from the larger Colombia society and one which evinced a long-standing history of violence of all sorts, including violence inspired by drugs, divisiveness over politics and simply the everyday-brand of violence that characterizes life in many impoverished areas of Colombia. The exhibit's sponsors collaborated with local citizens including young people, women and leaders in the community as well as nongovernmental organizations working in the barrio; in addition, the sponsors enlisted assistance from professionals from other disciplines as well including social workers, historians, teachers architects and other artists to design their exhibit. The journal article provided by Lacy contains excerpts of the interview concerning the project between Lacy and Riano.
The Skin of Memory was developed based on the concepts of memory, place, and violence, three fields of relationships and ideas that were highlighted by Pilar Riano's fieldwork. The general concern of her research is with the cultural dimensions of violence in Colombian cities. Riano explored the memories of Medellin city dwellers searching for clues that would reveal the complex and plural ways in which they are making sense of the violence affecting their lives and the ways they are refashioning their lives in the specific social context of Medellin. This work is best defined as anthropology of remembering, an ethnographic observation of how people remember and actualize memories in the every day life.
According to Lacy and Riano-Alcala, violence has created enormous divisions in the social and sensorial fabric of these communities which has limited the ability of the citizens in these communities to interact. For example, these authors report, "Violence has made deep fissures in the social and sensory fabric of barrio Antioquia, reducing the possibilities for interaction among residents. Perpetrators of violence are often known to the families of their victims, and retaliation is part of an ever-growing spiral of enmity and retribution. Mourning is a privatized act within the intimacy of family life."
When people are afraid to even meet their neighbors, it is not surprising that they become withdrawn and isolated, further exacerbating the divisiveness that has marred real progress in their neighborhoods which is where the Skin of Memory plays an important role. In this regard, Lacy and Riano-Alcala emphasize that, "The excess and intensity of violence that repeats itself hinders the possibilities for collectively coming to terms with loss. And it is precisely this type of collective mourning that is needed when human suffering has its origins in large-scale violence and political and economic power."
As a result, the fieldwork by Riano's provided an opportunity to identify the rare collective experiences to grieve and mourn that exist in communities such as Antioquia. In this way, the Skin of Memory has served as witness, interpreter and mediator of violence in Colombia in ways that would not be possible otherwise. As Lacy and Riano-Alcala emphasize, "Anger, pain and other emotions have not been dealt with as a community, and the art project was designed as a process that facilitate the opening of spaces and opportunities for individual and collective mourning, for sharing and communications and for envisioning the future through the process of art and memory."
These functions of the artist in modern Colombia were also the focus of an essay by Riano who reports, "The concept of place as a metaphor of/for identity and dwelling (habitat) was developed in the project through the installation as a museum of memory. The installation-museum was conceived as a place of/for memory, as a place of living memory and for re-signifying past memories, forgettings and silences."
Rather than a static display, though, the museum as memory adopted a mobile approach that would use a familiar object (e.g., a bus) as the literal and metaphorical vehicle by which this exhibition would serve to overcome the "gradual numbing" effects of violence and the divisiveness that keeps people apart and secluded unto themselves in many Colombian cities today. According to Riano, "The bus as a familiar moving object that crosses territorial borders provided the physical context for the installation, becoming the home where the memories of barrio Antioquia's residents inhabited. The museum then was seen as a place of community commemoration that re-created the past, from the present."
The exhibition, though, did not just fall out of the sky but was rather the result of extensive collaboration between the sponsoring artists and the residents of the community. According to Riano, "In June 1998 a series of meetings were held to design the project. Community residents, artists, anthropologists, and activists participated. Over the course of several months, a paid team of residents led by youth interviewed over one third of the total number of families in the neighborhood to collect objects loaded with personal memories for display in a temporary 'Museo arqueologico del Barrio Antioquia.'"
By mid-1999, the museum was created by Lacy, Riano, architect Victoria Rameriz, designer Raul Cabra, as well as local artisans who transformed the interior of a bus into a mobile display of artifacts reflective of daily life in Colombia and which were intended to evoke the powerful memories that these articles represented. Using a series of aluminum and glass shelves that were illuminated, the artists used various everyday items (including American currency, Donald Duck figurines, gold plated silverware that was from a former drug dealer, wedding pictures and other photographs and the clothing of young family members who had been killed in neighborhood shoot-outs) to connect with their viewing audience. Besides the everyday artifacts, an accompanying sound provided memories from local residents who provided first-hand accounts of what life has been like in the barrio over the years. According to Riano, "For ten days, the bus was stationed throughout different quarters of the Barrio to ensure that all could see it safely without having to cross into hostile areas."
While the international media has typically focused on the Medellin drug cartels that have been the source of so much of the violence in this region in recent years, this exhibition provided a rare opportunity for the community to be portrayed in a positive fashion -- and the turnout reflects the eagerness of community residents for this shift in perception. According to Riano, "Three hundred people a day visited; it was subject of national television programs when it moved for a week to downtown Medellin, at residents' request, so it could represent their community in a more positive light."
In her overview of the project, Riano reports, "Barrio Antioquia, in the middle of Medellin, Colombia, is an old community with a rich, varied, and sometimes tragic history, one which includes loss, stigmatization, and violence as a common experience for several generations. Death and disability are familiar companions of young people in particular, in this community that has seen civil war, violence from drug trafficking and youth gangs, and was at one time established by the City as a legalized prostitution zone."
Despite this legacy and a community whose economy remains reliant on extralegal commerce, the residents of this community have forged a sense of pride in their neighborhoods and have managed to overcome the debilitating effects of poverty in ways that can inspire others who are similarly situated to do the same.
Pilar Riano, who lives in Canada today, has collaborated on these types of exhibitions for a number of years, all of which have targeted the fundamental losses experienced by community residents, as well as their resilience in confronting them and overcoming them. Riano's work has been instrumental in creating venues for community remembering and was also the galvanizing force for this project wherein residents of Barrio Antioquia and a consortium of local organizations, including Accion Comunal Barrio Trinidad, Comfenalco, Corporacion Presencia Colombo Suiza, Corporacion Region, and Educame, solicited the assistance of Riano and Suzanne Lacy to produce a public art project to help resurrect a lost sense of community through art, celebration, and encouraging mutual interaction between members of the community.
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