Art as witness and mediator of political violence in Colombia

¶ … 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.

"De la Bordadora a los Telares," "el Problema del

Petroleo y la Energia" and "el Trabajo y la Maternidad/22-11-2006/Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia / commons / thumb/d/dd/Murales_de_Pedro_ Nel_Gomez-Medellin.JPG/779px-Murales_de_Pedro_Nel_Gomez-Medellin.JPG.

Marguerite R. Waller and Jennifer Rycenga, Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance (New York: Routledge, 2001): 75.

Debra Kalmanowitz and Bobby Lloyd, Art Therapy and Political Violence: With Art, without Illusion. London: Brunner-Routledge, 2005): 3.

"Report of the Public Issues Committee," the Ecumenical Review 58(2006, 1-2): 157.

Ibid.

Carlos Salinas, 2000, "Colombia in Crisis," Foreign Policy in Focus 5(5, March 6): 1.

James D. Henderson, 1985, When Colombia Bled: A History of the Violencia in Tolima (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press): 11.

Henderson 11.

Henderson 11.

Henderson 12.

Henderson 13.

Henderson 13.

Henderson 14.

:Steven Dudley, 2004, Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (New York: Routledge): 17.

Colombia. 2008. U.S. Government: CIA World Factbook. [Online]. Available: https://www.cia. gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/co.html 1.

Colombia 2.

Colombia 2.

German Rubiano, "El arte de la Violencia," Arte en Colombia, #25 (1984): 25

Gloria Zea, Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogota: Arte y Violencia en Colombia, p. 1.

Ibid.

Calvin Reid, "Juan Manuel Echavarria" Bomb. Issue 70 Winter 2000

Marta Traba, "Violencia: una obra comprometida con Obregon." La Nueva Prensa, vol. 65, ref. 136 a (August 1962): 72.

Raymond Williams and Kevin G. Guerrieri. 1999. Culture and Customs of Colombia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press): 82

Williams and Guerrieri 82.

Williams and Guerrieri 82.

Williams and Guerrieri 82

Perry Anderson, 2004, "A Magical Realist and His Reality," the Nation 278(3, January 26): 23.

Williams and Guerrieri 118.

Williams and Guerrieri 119.

Williams and Guerrieri 119.

Williams and Guerrieri 119.

Brett Troyan, Gregorio Hernandez de Alba (1904-1973): The Legitimization of Indigenous Ethnic Politics

in Colombia, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 82 (April 2007): 92.

Ibid.

Williams and Guerrieiri 118.

Traba 72 quoted in Jaramillo at 4.

Manzur, David. 2008. Art & Artists from Colombia. [Online]. Available: http://colombianart.wordpress. com/2007/10/12/david-manzur-drawings-assemblage-paintings/.

Juan Forero, December 13, 2005, "Debora Arango, 98, Painter of Politically Charged Themes," the New York Times, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0DE5DA1E31F930A25751C1A9639C8B63.

Forero 3.

Forero 3.

This condemnation of her works was not restricted to her homeland, either and Arango's work was also censored in Spain in 1955, when Francisco Franco abruptly closed an exhibition featuring her paintings; Forero 3.

Forero 4.

Quoted in Feroro at 4.

Ibid 3.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Roskin, Michael G. 2001. "Crime and Politics in Colombia: Considerations for U.S. Involvement." Parameters, 31(4), 126.

Roskin 127; the author adds that, "This analysis is broadly Hobbesian in that it asks what human behavior is like in the absence of a state that limits and controls what its citizens may do. The answer: extremely unpretty. While most consider Hobbes's 'state of nature' a purely theoretical construct, under certain circumstances it appears on earth, precisely where state power has severely weakened."

Ellen Brennan-Galvin, 2002, "Crime and Violence in an Urbanizing World," Journal of International Affairs 56(1): 123.

Ibid.

Luis Villar Borda, "Corruption. A historical constant," Credencial History Magazine (Bogota - Colombia). November 1999. No. 119 Published: Virtual Library of the Central Bank

Kline 1999: 7.

Gregory Sholette, "Affirmation of the Curatorial Class," Afterimage 28(5): 6.

Ibid 7.

Ibid.

Ibid 6.

Ibid. 6.

Williams and Guerrieri 121.

Williams and Guerrieri 121.

Cotter, "Beatriz Gonzalez: What an Honor to Be With You at This Historic Moment, Works 1965-1997" remained at El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, through October 25, 1998.

Cotter 2.

Cotter 2.

Ibid.

Beatriz Gonzalez, una pintora de provincia ["Beatriz Gonzalez, Province Painter"], Carlos Valencia Editores, Bogota, 1988: 18.

Holland Cotter, 1998, September 4. "Art Review: A Wry Defiance Behind Garish Colors and Tabloid Dramas." The New York Times. [Online]. Available: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE1D7113FF937 A3575AC0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Doris Salcedo, quoted in an unpublished interview with Charles Meriwether, 1991 cited in Cameron at 89.

Don Cameron, "Doris Salcedo: Absence Makes the Art," Artforum International 33(2, 1994, October): 88.

Don Cameron, "Doris Salcedo Absence Makes the Art by Doris Salcedo," Artforum International 33(2, 1994, October): 88.

Cameron 88.

Cameron 88.

Cameron 89.

Cameron 89.

Cameron 88.

Cameron 88.

Cameron 89.

Cameron 89.

Cameron 89.

Richard Allen and Malcolm Turvey. 2003. Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press), 253.

Quoted in France Morin, 2000. "The Quiet in the Land: Everyday Life, Contemporary Art, and Projeto Axe," Art Journal 59(3) at 4.

Morin 4.

Biography: Doris Salcedo (2009). Available from http://www1.uol.com.br/bienal/24bienal/edu/images/eeduamesalc01g.jpg & imgrefurl=http://ccaconnections.wordpress.com/2006/10/12/doris-salcedo/&usg=__lttfO3X8QvHJIb_ jRZBU8i8zYQQ=&h=407&w=599&sz=38&hl=en&start=12&um=1&tbnid=mHczIIS7WFR2uM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDORIS%2BSALCEDO%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN

Quoted in Biography at 3.

Biography at 3.

Eric Langenbacher, "Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. German Politics and Society 21(4, 2003): 127.

Madeleine Grynsztejn on Doris Salcedo, Tate Etc. Magazine (2007, Autumn): 2-3.

Salcedo 3.

Salcedo 3.

Salcedo 3.

Alex Fattal,2003, Spring. "Shooting for Peace." ReVista. [Online]. Available: http://www.drclas.harvard.edu / revista/articles/view/243.

Fattal 3-4.

Roca, 2003, January 4. "Muntadas: On Translation." ReVista 1.

Roca 3

Roca 3

Roca 3.

Roca 3.

Roca 4.

Roca 4.

Roca 4-5.

Roca 5.

Roca 5.

Roca 5.

Roca 5.

Julieta Lemaitre, Winter 2003. "Walking the Latin American City." ReVista, Cityscapes 1.

Lemaitre 4.

Suzanne Lacy and Pilar Riano-Alcala. 2006, "Medellin, Colombia: Reinhabiting Memory," Art Journal 65(4): 96.

Lacy and Riano-Alcala 97.

Lacy and Riano-Alcala 97

Patricia C. Phillips, 2006, "In This Issue: Positionings," Art Journal 65(4): 5.

Phillips 5.

Lacy and Riano-Alcala 97.

La piel de la memoria (the Skin of Memory) was created by the anthropologist Pilar Riano-Alcala, the artist Suzanne Lacy, and a multidiscipliary team in Colombia. The project was made possible by the collaboration of many others, including design work by Raul Cabra, Cabradiseno; production coordination by Mauricio Hoyos; and technical direction by Victoria Eugenia Ramirez L. The coordinating team members and their organizations were William Alvarez, Comfenalco; Angela Velasquez, Secretaria de Educacion y Cultura de Medellin; Jorge Garcia, Corporacion Presencia Colombo Suiza; and Juan Fernando Velez, Corporacion Region. The collecting team included Fabiola Arango, Adriana Arcila, Dora Alba Franco, Lina Jaramillo, Jose Jaramillo, Yuri Jimenez, Jenny Jimenez, Kelly Lozano, Luz Elena Montoya, Milena Medina, Irma Piedrahita, Diana Quintana, Janeth Eusse, Maria E. Rendon, Eliot Orrego, Nancy Ruiz, Marleny Torres, and Sandra Zapata. Project database by Juan Sebastian Vargas and Gladys Franco.

Lacy and Riano-Alcala 97.

Lacy and Riano-Alcala 98.

Lacy and Riano-Alcala 98.

Riano, 2008, "Violence and Memory." Suzannalacy.com. [Online]. Available: http://www.suzannelacy.com / 1990 sskin _violence.htm 1.

Riano 2.

Riano 2.

Riano 2.

Riano 3.

Riano 3.

Riano 3.

Riano 3.

Riano 4.

a generalization in the fashion described in the sentence immediately preceding this one

This is common knowledge as it appears in numerous texts and does not require citation but citation added per your request

I felt this quotation was right on the money and should remain. It was also left in the marked-up version you provided last.

Here again, because statistical information and dates are presented, a quotation is appropriate.

Given your deletion of other material along these lines in the previous version, this issue was a surprise. In fact, this was not mentioned in your previous marked-up version at all. Is this the episode you had in mind?

Andres Pastrana, Samper's rival during the 1994 election, bemoaned that Samper's policies were a "blatant" campaign to buy support and have gained him popularity as well as a budget deficit. Actually, Samper had gained popularity within Colombia primarily among the poor, certain business groups, and the Congress, which was overwhelmingly controlled by Samper's Liberal Party. Samper made friends among business groups by wooing them with special favors:

Ingrid Betancourt, an outspoken congresswoman, attributes the support that he has from the Santo Domingo group, Colombia's biggest conglomerate, to tax and other advantages that aid its beer, cellular-telephony, and other subsidiaries. Lesser companies have [also] won favors (Economist, March 30, 1996).

For reasons like these, Samper was not ousted from his position before his completed term (1998), much to the chagrin of U.S. investors and the mainstream press. Even so, the political crisis in Colombia remained severe, including the attacks on the Samper administration by the Prosecutor General Alfonso Valdiviesco Sarmiento, who was widely seen as an incorruptible man on a mission to strip drug influence from the upper levels of government. His campaign was supported by the Clinton administration. Washington has always wanted Samper out of office for economic reasons, the evidence suggests.

Juanita, this quotation is directly relevant to the thesis and this section. Did you just want me to paraphrase it? If I do, I believe it will lose its "zing" and authenticity. The same holds true for the other quotations that were left in place, although many were deleted and others paraphrased to the extent possible.

You asked me to explain how these works of art interpreted and mediated violence. This is what I attempted to do here. I'm not sure what you want me to do with this material otherwise.

I'm not sure what you want here, Juanita. This is one of the sources you requested me to use and it is properly paraphrased and interpolated.

In your marked-up version, you asked me to include additional information about this group. This was the only scholarly reference I could find. I'm not sure what the problem is here.

these authorities do not explain their rationale for dividing Obregon's career into these phases -- it is appears to be an arbitrary division for discussion purposes.

These issues are explored immediately following this sentence: the Bachue group as explicated with Gomez being foremost of these; it was unclear to me as well how these artists used the theme of violence in their works but the additional information on the Bachue group was included per your request in the previous marked-up version -- nothing I could find specifically related to how this group incorporated violence as a theme into their work.

This was the most relevant commentary I could find on Salcedo besides the Cameron essay above and her works as they relate to violence in Colombia. As I recall, this is her official biographer.

The journal article does not specifically explain why Lacy was selected for this project beyond what is presented and I could not find the rationale for her selection elsewhere; however, the journal article does preface her selection with the foregoing observation that her selection was intended to help communicate the impact of the violence etc.