Doris Salcedo

With work in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Tate, London, Colombian artist Doris Salcedo (b.1958) is one of today's most internationally respected South American sculptors. Inspired as much by poetry and philosophy as by the affecting material qualities of sculpture, Salcedo subtly and painstakingly transforms everyday household objects and garments — symbols of a vanished existence and of the human tragedies that are its cause. In Atrabiliaros (1991-6) abandoned shoes of 'disappeared' Colombian people, half-concealed behind membranes of animal fibre, become ghost-like symbols of mourning. In Salcedo's ongoing untitled works, wooden furnishings, worn by long use and filled with concrete, mutely evoke the lives they once served. American art critic Nancy Princenthal surveys Salcedo's work in terms of the universal themes it evokes, contextualized in discussion of contemporary scultural practice. New York-based poet and curator Carlos Basualdo discusses with the artist her formative influences, which range from the art of precedecessors such as Joseph Beuys to the writings of philosophers and poets. German literary critic Andreas Huyssen focuses on Salcedo's sculpture Unland: The Orphan's Tunic (1997). For the Arist's Choice, Salcedo has selected two texts: an extract from Otherwise Than Being (1974) by philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, and poems by Paul Celan. The Doris Salcedo's observations on the human condition and its reflection in the work of poets, novelists and thinkers are discussed in conversation with art historian Charles Merewether.