1. Exhibition view "Doris Salcedo" at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2023. © Doris Salecedo, Photo: Mark Niedermann
Doris Salcedo - Popular stories and events reincarnated into immersive and controversial works
Until mid-september, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel/Riehen present the complex and immersive works of the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo (born in 1958). And while the show presents eight important series of works, the show unfolds the stories of her native country in surprising and delicate way, in which the visitors will have to analyse and understand numerous historical fact.
Palimpsest - The beginning of
Salcedo story in the house
2. Doris Salcedo, Palimpsest, 2013-2017, hydraulics, ground marble, resin, corundum, sand and water; Mass variable. Exhibition view, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2022. Courtesy of Doris Salcedo and White Cube. © Doris Salcedo. Photo: Mark Niedermann.
Since a year, the Fondation Beyeler present the immersive installation of the artist titled "Palimpsest". In one statement she defines her work as "the memory of experience, which is always vanishing, not about experiences taken from life".
Thus, her installation Palimpset is quite a contemporary respond to the subject of Europe’s migrant crisis and the many who have fled from Africa or the Middle East over the past 20 years and drowned in the Mediterranean or Adriatic attempting to cross into Europe.
In tribunes to these people, around 300 names, we're put into rectangular stone slabs covering the biggest gallery space of the museum.
The installation is made with numerous steps. First, the names are first spelled out in sand (for those who died before 2010), and then a second layer is added with the person died between 2011-2016, who are showcases using water droplets.
Thus, the installation is always evolving and shapeshifting depending on the time of the day, the hours or even the name which appear and disappear.
The installation was originally produced for the Palacio de Cristal, Centro de Arte Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid, the installation traveled to White Cube in London before making a long stop at the Fondation Beyeler.
And now. A full body of works
A year later, the museum dedicate it's exhibition space to the rest of her works from May 2023 until Mid-September. For the artist, the process, the research and the act of visiting the exhibition is part of the whole process, but before the installation Palimpset, all of her research were anonymous.
Key works of the exhibition
3. Exhibition view "Doris Salcedo" at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2023. © Doris Salecedo, Photo: Mark Niedermann
In the second room of the exhibition, you encounter "A Flor de Piel" (2012), which is an immersive and gigantic work made out of rose petals and surgical thread arranged like an imposing tapestry. And while the process of making the work was quite complex between the research, the roses, the chemical elements and products needed to conserve this roses in a flexible state, the petals was then sew by hand using surgical thread which reflect on the human existence and it's fragility.
Afterwards, the viewer might be overwhelmed, like entitled the Spanish expression which actually reflects the titled of the work as an emotion. The emotions will come after the research of the artist after the life of a Colombian nurse who was abducted and tortured to death, thus the work evokes the funeral rites and the despairing body.
In the fourth room of the exhibition, the artist presents an immersive and unique installation in the wall of the room. And while the work consists of shoes, fibre tissue and surgical thread, and a series of translucent boxes made with parchment like material, the niches on the wall have been filled with numerous shoes and covered by stretched animal skin.
The shoes reflect on the trace of the person, whose shape as an isolated item, a shoe, symbolling the lost of its formal owner.
The title of the work "Atrabiliarios" (1992-2004) derives from the Latin word "atra bilis", which described the melancholy associated with mourning. Mourning and the act of remembering people are one of the aspects and research of Doris's Salcedo's works due to numerous stories she had in her country and the act of protecting and remembering this people by protecting them with thus membrane.
The exhibition catalog
The exhibition catalogue feature essays by Fiona Hesse, Seloua Luste Boulbina, Mary Schneider Enriquez and Sam Keller and poems by Ocean Vuong. And it's published by Hatje Cantz.
ISBN: 978-3-7757-5493-4
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Fondation Beyeler
Date: 21.05.2023 - 17.09.2023
Curators: Fiona Hesse and Sam Keller
Ticket: Available online OR at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101
CH-4125 Riehen/Basel
Phone: +41 61 645 97 00
Fax: +41 61 645 97 19
Mail: info@fondationbeyeler.ch