Doris Salcedo

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0:29Hello and welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which some of the world's leading artistic figures choose the most important influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is the Colombian artist Doris Salcedo. Since the late 1980s, Salcedo has made work in response to conflict and political violence, drawing on the testimonies of victims to create metaphorical sculptures and installations about trauma, loss and survival. She's now recognised as one of the most important living artists, with work shown in museums and galleries all around the world, including in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in 2007.

1:10Doris Salcedo is the 2025 recipient of the Whitechapel Gallery's prestigious Art Icon Award, in recognition of her profound contribution to the artistic landscape.

1:25Doris Salcedo, welcome to This Cultural Life. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to be here. You've had an international career spanning more than four decades now. In the UK, you're probably best known for that 2007 work, Shibboleth, the 548-foot-long crack along the floor of the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern. And many people will remember walking into that space, walking the length of that crack. This year, the Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo has challenged the very space she was offered to create in. She has broken open the floor of the turbine hall and made a subterranean sculpture which looks like an earthquake has hit the building.

2:06The fissure starts as a hairline fracture in the concrete floor. It's likely to divide the public. It's a crack in the floor running the entire length of the building. The sculptor responsible is refusing to divulge how she did it, but the gallery insists the work is not an optical illusion. What was the idea behind that work? Well, I was the first non-white artist to be invited to the Turbine Hall, so I felt that I had to bring who I was and what I was and my history into that space. So I found this little tiny crack at the very entrance and I spent some time there just watching people's reactions And people walk into the space and were like, they all were looking up in wonder at this space.

2:55And I thought, nobody looks down. And down is where I am. Down is where the dark people of this earth are. And I started thinking of this word underclass, which is, I think, is so brutal. And so I wanted to create a space that is occupied by all the black and brown people of the world who have been brutally colonized. and who seemingly have never, ever, ever had anything to do with the creation of European civilization. And actually, that is not the case. I think because we have been colonized, because of the imperial history, because of our labor, and because of our enslavement, is that Europe had the opportunity to create this culture of taste with museums and cafes and literary rooms and so on and so forth.

3:48And the owners of plantation and slavery, they brought the money here, and with that money, museums were created. So I thought that was absolutely essential to tell the story from the perspective of the defeated ones. And you're changing perspective, literally, because you're forcing us not to look up but to look down. To look down where we are. Because there's an element of danger as well, because the further you walked down the turbine hall, it was an extraordinary experience because the crack got wider and therefore more dangerous. I mean, some people did actually trip into it, didn't they?

4:20Yeah. I wanted to show that this piece apparently just happened in the turbine hall and just erupted in the turbine hall, just as the figure of the migrant is always disrupting the homogeneity of European societies. So the theme of that piece was division and social fracture. Yes. That's the other thing you could read. It's really interesting that you said a moment ago that when you walked into the hall, you saw a tiny crack in the floor and that was the inspiration. And then you managed to open it up. I have wondered for many years now, how did you manage to do it? I mean, literally, how was that crack made?

4:56It was made in my studio in Bogota. And then it was brought to the Turbine Hall. and then we carved the space very delicately, even with dental tools. Even though the piece was so huge, so long, my room for error was two millimetres. Wow. So it had to be extremely precise. It was precisely done and precisely installed. Are you suggesting, therefore, that the piece was made prefabricated in your studio and then loaded into a sort of a channel that had been cut into the floor of the hall? Yes, exactly. That's extraordinary. I never knew that. Yeah, that's exactly the way it was made. Was it made from concrete?

5:36Was it made from plaster? What is the internal structure that you saw? I found these gigantic rocks and we made them all out of that stone. It was like, I don't know, eight feet deep, but I wanted it to look endless, like it could go beyond to the centre of the earth. So it was very carefully designed in order to look like that. It was actually built as a structural element that reinforced the building. It didn't weaken the building, it reinforced the building. It was very carefully designed. I was at Tate Modern the other night and I looked down from the bridge down to the turbine hall floor and it reminded me that it is the only piece, I think, that has been commissioned for the turbine hall that has a physical legacy because the scar of your crack is still there.

6:24We can still see it on the floor. That was known because concrete can never be mended properly. So it was part of the project that the wound, that scar will always remain. And I think countries with imperial history have scarred the planet. Wherever they have invaded, whichever area they have colonised, those areas are permanently scarred. So the scar was a very important part of this project. And the word shibboleth itself is about, it's a story from the Bible, isn't it, which relates to division. It was a fight between two tribes, two Israeli tribes, and the Bible describes the biggest massacre, 40 ,000 people.

7:05So when people were going to cross the border, they were asked to pronounce the word shibboleth, which they pronounced zibboleth. And then they knew they were the ones to be killed because you belong to a different tribe. And this aspect has been repeated in history many, many times. Even during the Colombian independence, the natives were forced to pronounce Zaragoza. And as we pronounce it differently from the Spaniards, people were murdered at that time. It happened in Haiti, in the border with the Dominican Republic. They were forced to pronounce the word Perejil, and they were killed right in the border.

7:44So it refers to the act of being killed when you cross borders. That's how dangerous it is to cross borders. And as we witness daily, people are dying when crossing borders, when they make an attempt to find a decent life.

8:08Doris Alcedo, you were born in Bogota in 1958, 1958, a politically tumultuous time in Colombia, of course. What was your early childhood like? What are your memories? Well, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that wrote a proper history of the Colombian conflict, they say that the conflict had started in 1958. And as you just said, I was born in 1958. So I've seen war all of my life. But the war was a low-intensity conflict. So it happened in the countryside. So actually, when I was growing up, it was sort of quiet, but with one element. Right now, the world has found a polite way to describe the Global South thing.

8:51Well, Global South. But when I was growing up, it was underdeveloped. We were underdeveloped countries with an underdeveloped economy and, of course, an underdeveloped culture. It is horrific to grow up in a country where you know that your culture, your thinking, your writing, your art, everything is underdeveloped. You're regarded as an underclass by the rest of the world. Yeah, absolutely. And you had that awareness, that sense of your position in the world. Of course. What did your parents do? My father had a small business that was not very successful, and my mother was a seamstress. So I came from a really lower middle class background, so we have to work and we have to struggle.

9:29But my family was really aware politically, so I think on a daily basis we had political discussions on the dinner table. and that was a very important formative aspect. And however little culture there was in Bogota at the time, I was always taken to everything, whatever concerts, whatever shows, whatever. So I had the opportunity to develop my vocation, my call very early on. I started taking drawing lessons when I was a six-year-old. And you had an aptitude, right, from a young age and a love of making a mark. Always. And what sort of, you say, I mean, I presume theatre, and music, you could go to concerts, but, I mean, not many museums in Bogota at the time.

10:11Not many museums, but there were some shows. However, as a young art student, we were taught a class that was universal art history, and universal art history, of course, was only European art history, and we don't have museums, so we don't have originals. So it was really late in my life, when I was 22, 23, that I had access to actually see an original work of art from that quote-unquote universal art history. On This Cultural Life, Doris Alcedo, my guests choose the most significant influences and experiences, the people, places, cultural works that inspired their own creativity. And your first choice is the painting entitled The 3rd of May, 1808 by the Spanish artist Goya.

11:00Just describe the painting first of all. Well, I think it's an astonishing, powerful painting where you see in the very centre of the painting the victim. The victim that is with arms stretched, the figure of Christ, and all the light of the painting is in that white shirt that the victim is wearing. He's facing a firing squad. He's facing a firing squad that is grey, that is dark, and that is perfectly organised, like a machine, like with no feelings. In a straight line. Yeah, in a straight line. So that painting defines exactly what war is for me. There's nothing heroic about war. It's just horror.

11:39It's just the unevenness of powerful armies against unarmed victims. The original painting hangs in the Prado Museum in Madrid. I presume the first time you saw it was in reproduction then, was it? Yeah, I saw it in reproductions. And the first trip I made out of Colombia was to see, well, to see Guernica and to see the Fusilamientos, to see the Goya painting. When did you see it in reproduction, first of all? How old would you have been? Oh, I think I was 17, 18 years old. And how aware were you of the story behind the painting? I was completely aware of it. If you are in a country that is at war, the shadow of war is cast over every act of your daily life.

12:22And it was in response to massacres by Napoleonic troops within Spain in the early 19th century in response to popular uprisings against the invasion. I think it was painted actually as a piece of political propaganda, wasn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. And you saw it eventually in the Prado when you were in your 20s. Yeah. And that's very different seeing a painting like that. What was the emotional impact? It was a shock. I was shocked out of my senses. Even though you were familiar with the image? Yeah, I remember being out of myself. I cannot even describe what it was because it was not rational.

12:58But I knew that my life was going to be devoted to do exactly that, exactly that, to show the horrors of war. In whichever contemporary manner, I knew my situation was different, I knew the timeline was different. The experience of the victims, however, remained the same. Because you had grown up, of course, in Colombia, surrounded by violence, a country riven by political violence. The government was at war with the leftist FARC guerrilla movement when you were growing up and you were very aware of that. Did the violence that Goya depicted in that painting, did it resonate more strongly because of your experience in Colombia?

13:39I think it does. I think being Colombian gives me the chance to be closer and more acquainted with the horrific effects of war. And now in the world, we are witnessing deafening, brutal wars in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, not only in Colombia. We are all aware of wars, of the level of destruction, of the level of brutality. We are all aware of the fact that for some human beings, the end of the world has already arrived. It's not the end of the world as the religious mythologies have taught us that at some point something will happen. The last judgment will arrive. No. If your family has been killed, if your house has been destroyed, if your block has been destroyed, if your neighborhood has been destroyed, if your city has been destroyed, if everything you see when you look up and down, north and south, east and west, is destruction, then the end of the world has already arrived.

14:38And I want to place myself right there. Right there, at that moment where there is nothing, nothing left, nothing but loss. How do you live with loss? And then I start each one of my pieces from that very moment. I try to place myself in the place of the victim or nothing. And then start building with imagination, with creativity, a new world out of nothing. Had you been directly touched by the violence? Had you lost friends? I have lost friends. I have lost people that I know. In 1985, it was the first time I have contact with an actual act of war. I was working in a museum two blocks away from the Supreme Court of Colombia when the Palace of Justice was seized by a guerrilla commando.

15:27And when I heard the gunshots, I ran to the main square of Bogotá and I already saw the tanks attacking the Supreme Court building.

15:42The siege itself took place over two days. Over two days. And many judges, Supreme Court judges, were killed as well, weren't they, along with some of the guerrillas, because the building was then stormed by the military. Yeah, yeah. A terrible massacre. And you were there right at the start. Yeah, absolutely. Civilians were caught up in the shooting as members of the fiercest and most intransigent of Colombia's diverse groups of left-wing, anti-government fighters took over the building. They took judges and court workers hostage, demanding negotiations with the president in person. But all they got was a barrage of fire from the soldiers and policemen who poured into the surrounding streets.

16:22And you responded with an artwork, which was a performative piece in a way, in which I think something like 200 chairs were lowered from the roof of the building and were hanging alongside the walls of the building. as each chair responded or corresponded to a death that had taken place during that siege. What was the process of seeing the siege taking place to actually making that work? It took me 17 years to respond. However, from the very beginning, I was collecting information. And then in 1995, I knew I had located a lot of objects that remained from the building. I had contacted families.

17:03I had a huge archive. and I tried to make a piece and I was censored. I was not allowed to make that piece in 1995. And then I started asking the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, everybody to allow me to use these objects and every time I requested these objects, the objects disappear. Fortunately, by the year 2002, I was allowed to make this piece out of nothing because all the objects that bear the traces of the attack had completely vanished. And I had the autopsies of most of the people who have died. So I created a timetable. And according to that, I started the piece on November 6th at 11.35 a.m.

17:56when the first person was murdered. And from then on, according to the time of the death, during 53 hours, different pieces were lowered on the façade of the new Palace of Justice because the old one had been demolished. That Palace of Justice piece, that was called November the 6th and 7th, which was the days in which the siege took place. You were talking about the Goya painting, which is called the 3rd of May, 1808. And in fact, there is a companion painting, which is called the 4th of May. So were you naming your piece in honour of Goya? Actually, this is the first time I made that connection.

18:35I hadn't made that connection before. Now that you mention it, it's clear. But I was not conscious of that. I was thinking that many bodies were not found because they were reduced to ashes. The building was destroyed. Everything was reduced to ashes or disappeared. So the only thing that remained was the date. Just give us a sense of how you developed your artistic approach, your aesthetic at this time. I know you studied art at University of Bogota and then went to New York to study art. Why New York, first of all? Well, because if you come from a former colony, we don't have museums. I had no chance to see original works of art.

19:14And at the time, there was not a whole lot of contemporary art theory or history being translated into Spanish. So it was essential to learn English, to have access to information. And it was essential to go to New York and to Europe to see art history, because in spite of the fact that we do not form an essential part of Western culture, Western culture is all there is for us, because our own culture has been destroyed. So you are maybe the last part of the last tale of Western culture. But however, that is the canon in which I have to develop my work. And I presume it wasn't just an awareness of the history of art that you could see in New York.

19:58It was about contemporary art that was being made in the mid-1980s. Yes. So a very vibrant time in New York. Yeah, yeah. And for me... And that changed your artistic sensibility. Yeah. Also, then I encountered Joseph Boyce, who was as important as Goya for me. And his concept of social sculpture just opened up a world of possibilities for me. Because I thought, OK, yes, art can affect not a direct change in society, but it can help show a path, show different possibilities. Art can show different ways of acting, of understanding reality. And I love that idea. And was it the idea that Joseph Beuys was making these often monumental works, but there was a domesticity to a lot of the object that he used?

20:46I mean, the sort of thing that you are well known for as well. He had both, the domesticity and then the monumentality. Did you ever meet Joseph Beuys? No, no, no, no, never. That would have been a great conversation. Oh, that would have been wonderful. You returned to Columbia after your studies in New York. Were you not tempted to stay in New York? Because developing your language, your sensibility, in tune with what was happening going on in New York? Never, never. I thought at the time, I thought it was useless. I mean, New York's history had been told so many times and our history had never been told.

21:20So it was absolutely essential to be an artist, to have a perspective. And that was the perspective from the Global South. So Colombia not only exports cocaine and guerrilla and violence, but we have the capacity to export thought, thinking. So that's why I make the point to make every single piece in Colombia, even the crack. So you had a responsibility, you felt an obligation to return. An obligation. Absolutely.

21:53Your next choice for This Cultural Life, Doris Salcedo, are the testimonies of the survivors of the Colombian Civil War and you say they have defined your work. Was there a moment when you decided that should be the purpose of your art, to give voice to the victims of violence? Yes. When I returned in 1985, the Colombian conflict, who had been sort of low intensity, then it blew up. It blew up and we had not only the left-wing guerrillas but then we have a very strong right-wing paramilitary groups aligned with the drug cartels. And so the level of violence was grew exponentially. And then I understood that I knew nothing.

22:40What is your life like when the end of the world arrives? How do you feel? How do you continue? How do you make up your life? So I started researching carefully, going to war zones, going to, if a massacre takes place in a place, I will go next day and talk to witnesses and talk to survivors and then returned to see how life has been transformed or deformed. And so you were visiting the abandoned villages, the execution sites, concentration camps, mass graves. And when you arrived there, how do you go about making those contacts with people who have witnessed what's happened? Well, I always found somebody.

23:21There are many brave nuns and priests. Sometimes I travel with human rights organizations. So these are rural areas, remote areas very often. Really remote areas, really difficult access. But I was always accompanied by somebody, so I never felt, well, almost never felt treated and had always direct access to the victims. Talking to them, understanding their surroundings, paying attention to each word, so their words, their material surroundings, the experience they had lived, All that I understood that I had to be absolutely obedient to that. And that's how I chose the materials or the titles of my work or the shape of the pieces.

24:07Well, let's just talk about one of those works that you made in response in 1992. There's a series called Atribilius, which seems to address the Colombian Civil War and the thousands of people who died and who were never seen again, the disappeared. Just describe those works that we saw in the gallery as a result. At the time when I was making that piece, DNA tests were not common. So I started researching one single case of a guerrilla woman that had been disappeared. And then I realized that, first of all, women that were disappeared by force, they were kept alive in order to be raped for a long time.

24:49It was worse than for males that were killed right away. I talked to the families of these disappeared women and men, and they kept everything that belonged to that person like in a shrine. They kept the closet, the clothing, and in some cases, even the mothers set a place in the dining table in case they came back. I met a mother who had not left her home for 20 years in case her son could call. They will never move to another house. It is horrific what happened to these families. So I borrowed the shoes they have kept, and I made some niches. And then I covered these niches with animal fibre, and I stitched that animal fibre with surgical thread.

25:35And you said that the niche is like a sort of rectangular shoebox-sized space, a recess in the wall of the gallery. Yes, yes. In a way, I brought the paint that was inscribed in the private realm of the family, and I wanted to make many niches. So it came to the public sphere to show that in Colombia that was a social problem. We have more than 200 ,000 people who are missing. So that's why I needed to make this a collective social problem. And it's an incredibly emotional thing to see because those shoes are so representative, because they are so personal. And as you say, it's about those shoes are put aside in a way because of the uncertainty, not knowing whether those loved ones are ever going to be seen again.

26:20It's interesting how those recesses containing the shoes are sealed with a kind of sliver of pigskin and stitched onto the wall of the gallery. Stitching itself recurs in much of your work. And as you say, your mother was a seamstress, wasn't she? Yeah. So it goes back. Is that a kind of a conscious reference to her? Absolutely. She was really skillful. She made these extraordinary fancy dresses and nine gowns and wedding dresses and things like that. And I think I had a lot of ability from her, and she encouraged that in me. But also because I think it's very important to show care. So my sculptures are carefully made and lovingly made because one thing is to work with violence, and violence is horrific.