Doris Salcedo

Ten major series of sculptures by Doris Salcedo fill the museum galleries like a labyrinthine graveyard for the artist’s first retrospective. Clumps of human-scaled objects summon an atmosphere of collective mourning, similarly provoked by her large-scale public interventions, the latter of which are represented here only by a documentary video. Twenty-nine years of sculpture by the Colombian artist commemorate the inglorious deaths and traumas of victims of gang violence in Los Angeles or a banana-plantation massacre in Colombia, among other atrocities. Survivor testimonies conducted by Salcedo are metaphorically absorbed into materials like cast concrete and busted metal bound with animal guts throughout untitled artworks dating to 1986. A haunted feeling pervades.

Salcedo emerged in the 1980s amid the rise of post-trauma studies as an academic discipline, but her work strums a power chord on the heartstrings. For instance, A flor de piel (Heart On Your Sleeve), 2014, is made of thousands of rose petals preserved and sewn into a giant shroud the color of spilled blood, filling an entire gallery. It’s a place to empty your emotions.

This artist knows that museum guests invariably become mourners at her global memorial. In this call to act, we can see the seeds of today’s social practices that focus on research, activism, and justice. For instance, Salcedo’s pioneering work using reclaimed wood and concrete is a material legacy carried on by artists such as Theaster Gates, who lectures on Salcedo at the museum on May 16.