Memory, Mourning & Most Importantly Remembering...

                                                                                                     

Beth Marzoni, an Assistant Professor of English at Viterbo University, participated in the lecture series of Hispanic Heritage Month 2015 with her poetry presentation of Suite for Retrospective, Poems after Doris Salcedo.  

Profe Marzoni implemented Ekphrasis, "a literary description of or commentary on a visual work." So we were introduced to both the powerful art of Doris Salcedo and the poetry it inspired Marzoni to write. 

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Doris Salcedo is a Colombian born sculptor deals with her life experiences transforming household items like chairs, tables, roses, to represent the murdered, los desaparecidos, those that literally 'disappeared' both during the Colombian Civil War and drug war years into her installations.

(Do forgive the quality of the following photos as they are taken from Marzoni's power point screen presentation)

In this installation Salcedo slowly lowered one chair at a time from the Palacio de Justicia's roof to commemorate the exact time a 100 people were killed.  

220,000 Colombians lost their lives during the Civil War years.

Impaled shirts and empty cots represent Colombians murdered who will never need nor use these common day items again.

The emptiness of the placement of the piece also moved me ...

In another installation roses lined 4.5 km from the homes of the deceased to where they were murdered by the military. The inverted rose placement was to create questions, not answers.

 

While listening to Marzoni's poem and viewing Atrabiliarios, sheepskin covered niches containing both single and pairs of shoes, thread stitches and the skin covered stacked boxes, I was so touched that   tears streamed down my face. 

Senseless war and death portrayed by combined destroyed tables, human hair and a gauze like fabric help the viewer remember the devastation of hatred and the loss it leaves behind. It is our responsibility to remember.

Shibboleth, a crack extending the entire length of the London's Tate's museum hall floor "representing borders, the experience of immigrants, the experience of segregation, the experience of racial hatred. It is the experience of a Third World person coming into the heart of Europe,"and may I add, our country the United States of America. 

Let us never forget why people have to leave their beloved homes... 

Thank you Prof. Marzoni for sharing your yet unpublished works and the work that inspired them. Political Art serves a great service to us all as we all become witnesses to their testimony.

Salcedo at Chicago's Museum of Modern Art