Absence and Pain in the Work of Doris Salcedo and Rosemberg Sandoval

Author(s): Gastón Alzate and Marcia Olander

Source: South Central Review , FALL 2013, Vol. 30, No. 3, Special Issue: Traumatic
Spectacles: Recent Latin American Drama and Performance (FALL 2013), pp. 5-20
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central
Modern Language Association

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Absence and Pain in the Work of Doris Salcedo and

Rosemberg Sandoval

Gastón Alzate, California State University, Los Angeles

(Translated by Marcia Olander, Princeton University)

This article deals with two contemporary Colombian artists, Doris

Salcedo (1958) and Rosemberg Sandoval (1959), whose works address
the situation of victims of violence, presented as ruins or remains left
by contemporary history. In other words, they tackle the pain and dehu-
manization of those who are excluded from participation in political and
historical events and/or devastated by these experiences. Because their
work is so extensive, I will focus on a few representative works by both.
In order to explore their artwork I will rely mainly on the ideas of
the French-Lithuanian philosopher of Jewish origin Emmanuel Lévinas
because I consider Lévinas' ethical concern for the Other to be present
in both artists' approaches. For this philosopher, ethics would be the first
form of thought, the first philosophy. It is not a matter so much of seeking
a rational system or moral precepts or norms that humanity should follow
but, on the contrary, of ethics "as the extreme exposure and sensitivity
of one subjectivity to another."1 Thus, the idea of vulnerability is linked
directly with that of responsibility for the Other.
Another significant aspect of Lévinas' philosophical approach is that
he emphasizes that dialogue with others is not based on comprehen-
sion or on persuasion, but on the encounter between two people and
the discovery of the Other in the differences. Therefore, he proposes a
political philosophy of peace based on differences: to be face to face, in
disagreement, and yet continue to express our thoughts without insist-
ing that our ideas become guiding principals for the Other or seeking
to destroy him.2 This is another aspect to be developed in connection to
the artwork of Salcedo and Sandoval. In fact, Salcedo included a text
by Lévinas in a book on her work (see Princenthal),3 and I have also ex-
plored his thought in connection with Sandoval's art in an essay written
in collaboration (see Marin).4
In order to analyze these artists' works I also found a foothold in one of
the key concepts of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. For Lacan the
real is "impossible" to translate into words or symbols as we are always
conditioned by a way of understanding it (see Lemaire).5 This idea, for

© South Central Review 30.3 (Fall 2013): 5-20.

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6 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

me, is complemented by som

the insufficiency of words, af
a better future.6 Finally, this
Colombia, with its history o
developed their work.
Both artists use strategies f
and present their work in ei
sion also shares a challenge t
society regarding the situatio
are ignored by government
urban poor displaced by the
political
refugees without sup
stigmatized or deemed unin
seen by many as obstacles to
for their situation; their suffe
justified as deserved in the
political and intellectual figu
Thus, the works of Salcedo
matization and oblivion to w
society at large. Their work sh
permeating life in their coun
of a period in Colombian hist
"the Violence"). However, th
ing and its socio-political cau
their common humanity wit
2012 about the concept of b
emphasizing the need to under
to the right to "una vida digna
nection between ethics and
concept of beauty has always a
emancipate itself, depending
in the XX century with the a
fifty years to having a place o
in Colombia, or in any part o
While both artists take th
starting point, Salcedo in pa
consciousness of spectators f
monic countries. Most of the
know what is going on in oth
the global village. In rich nat
be apathetic about the situat

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THE WORK OF DORIS SALCEDO AND ROSEMBERG SANDOVAL / ALZATE 1

own countries: the homeless, impoverished and marginalized minorities

or indigenous groups, undocumented immigrants and, in general, those
who live precarious lives because of the conditions imposed by global
capitalism. In a 1998 interview with Charles Merewether, Salcedo states
"I do not speak of the violence in Colombia from a nationalist perspec-
tive. I focus on the individual and not on the acts of violence that define
the State. I am aware that art has a precarious capacity to denounce
[. . .] As a result I am interested in questioning the elements of violence
that are endemic to human nature. Cruelty, indolence and hatred towards
other are universal."8

Art and Context

Salcedo and Sandoval began their art careers in the 1980s, an extremely
complex socio-political period during which the internal armed conflict
in Colombia intensified. Sandoval's first exhibition was a 1981 show
by a young artists' collective at the National Museum, while Salcedo's
inaugural solo exhibition took place in 1985 at Casa de la Moneda. Both
exhibition spaces are in Bogotá, the capital city. The two artists studied
art around the same time (Salcedo in Bogota's Jorge Tadeo Lozano
University and Sandoval in Cali at Del Valle University), and they give
credit to some of the same international artists as having influenced their
work: Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman, and Gordon Matta-Clark. The "an-
architecture" of the latter is particularly relevant because he dissected
and altered existing objects impregnated with human existence, as do
Salcedo and Sandoval; in the case of Matta-Clark, his interest lay in
buildings about to be demolished, which was related to his desire to shed
new poetic light on fragments of life discarded by economic progress.
Salcedo and Sandoval often work with daily-life materials obtained
from contexts of marginality and violence such as used clothing, worn
furniture, old toys, and in the case of Sandoval, even human remains.
Both deal with suffering understood as a contemporary pathos linked
to the ineffable character of individual pain and death, albeit through
different aesthetic strategies, to be explored here.
Since the 1980's Salcedo has employed recovered objects in her
artwork - mainly sculptures and installations - including industrial
and organic materials which she used as metaphors for the presence in
absentia of the human body. In her 1989 Sin título ( Untitled) series she
entombed old clothing, shoes, and furniture in cement as if they were
frozen in time. These self-contained and quasi-mystical objects evoke

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8 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

human life in anonymous h

increasingly in close contact
experienced the loss of belo
focused on the aesthetic mani
of pain. These were simple
tables, chairs, and clothing
children's clothing into cem
cation in an anonymous tom
of an enclosed sacred space,
observer of the forceful dis
and cupboard were also buri
and turning them into lifeles
present through its absence
into missing lives. While th
objects that had no explicit
was clearly evinced through
a witness to pain.
A work by Sandoval from
is A manera de emergencia
gency (1985). The sculpture
different sizes set on end and
serves as the base of the ob
of a wave at the top of the p
are nails sticking out at odd
with its juxtaposition of suc
strange; only when he or she
after a terrorist attack in d
this sense the conceptual el
the title of the piece, the ir
as a terrorist act, determin
of art with the elements pr
a terrorist attack and assem
they were plastic materials fo
episode as a routine act tha
context, has lost its dramat
In both works we find the i
political space that is impos
the first moment, in the se
hostile. In these installation
spectator is obliged to expe
are rough, even intimidatin

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THE WORK OF DORIS SALCEDO AND ROSEMBERG SANDOVAL / ALZATE 9

them from their original context, which means that we lose the possibil-
ity of contemplating them with a certain distance (and patience). They
cannot be observed as one would look at a painting or attend a concert.
Since both artists use objects taken from daily life that imply disappeared
human bodies (used clothing, shoes and furniture and fragments of ex-
ploded window panes), they propose a dramatic closeness between these
implicit visual histories and the spectators. After all, the forms given to
these objects evoke pain. While we cannot repeat the experiences these
pieces refer to, clearly they appeal to the spectator's corporeal condi-
tion and sense. In this way they elicit the viewer's identification, albeit
involuntary, with forms of suffering that imply a political meaning in life.
If politics, not necessarily in ideological terms but in terms of concern
for one's fellow human beings, has been a foreign concept, or at least
unimportant, to the spectator, he is forced to confront facts that he might
prefer to avoid.
Returning to the ideas of Lévinas, it is clear that both Salcedo 's Untitled
and Sandoval's In the Way of Emergency seek to transform the spectator's
comprehension and experience regarding the reality of his fellow people.
The majority of these viewers tend to make sense of victims as faceless
numbers or, worse, as the inevitable collateral damage of the situation
in Colombia or Latin America and, therefore, somehow unsubstantial.

Breaking with Knowledge as Domination

For Lévinas the forms of knowledge and knowing are strategies of

appropriation and specifically of domination that are constantly present
in human relations. The works we have been discussing try to break the
distancing entailed in the relationship between knowing and controlling
to establish transcendent communication between the artist, the spectator,
and the Other. While it's true that we can know others through words
and/or by acquiring information from the media, the Other we construct
in this way is but an abstraction. While it seems we have direct access
to a wealth of information on the internet, newspapers, and the general
mass-media, most of it is superficial, biased, and responds to political and
economic interests. In short, we are immersed in a dominant system of
thought that appears to connect people, but instead tends to isolate them.
The needy or victims become distant facts - or mere data - robbing the
Other of the power to question our humanity.
For philosophers since Heidegger, man is a being in time, a being
for death; the only way to break this, according to Lévinas, is to allow
the Other to reveal his subjectivity, that he may interrogate us from his

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 1 0 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

absolute difference. Salcedo and Sandoval invite us to establish a differ-

ent type of relationship with the Other based on material steeped in the
stuff of absent fellow beings, as fragile and human as are we ourselves.
In the case of Salcedo, the pathos is related also to the contemporary
phenomenon of migration and exile, experienced by sizable human
groups that in Africa, Asia or America have lost their citizenship and
live in limbo without even minimum social structures. The best-known
example of this is Salcedo 's famous sculpture Shibboleth, elaborated for
The Turbine Hall of the London's Tate Gallery in 2007.
Shibboleth is a Hebrew word for stalk of grain. The title refers to a
passage in the Old Testament which recounts how the members of one
tribe identified those of another through their different pronunciation
of the first syllable of the word "Shibboleth," so that this subtle differ-
ence marked the breach between life and death. This title also evokes a
poem by the same name by Paul Celan, whom Salcedo recognizes as a
central influence in her work. In an interview with the BBC about this
poet and of Shibboleth, Salcedo says, "In Celan's poem he refers to per-
manent mourning, because there is no way, through art, to recover the
lost lives" (my translation).9 As a Jewish writer who lived at the time of
the Holocaust, Celan emphasizes the need to continue to be a witness of
what has happened: "Set your flag at half-mast/ memory./ At half-mast/
today and for ever.'"0
Salcedo 's sculpture consists of an enormous 167 meter-long crack in
the ground of the Tate Gallery's Turbine Hall. The crack is several meters
deep and the substratum is made up of rocks brought from Colombia.
The breach is envisioned as a giant scar between rich and poor nations,
an incarnation of the irremediable distance between the two. According
to the artist, it deals with racism and "the divisions between creed, color,
class and culture that maintain our social order, precariously balanced
as it is on the precipice of a chaotic void of hatred."11 It is a metaphor
for the exploitation and the sacking of both riches and of human lives in
contemporary history, but it's also a critique of art and of the museum
institution. It is not a work to be contemplated passively, since the width
and depth of the crack vary immensely. Neither does it adapt itself to the
gallery space, but rather it intrudes upon and thus questions this space.
Richard Dorment, who reviewed this artwork for The Telegraph wrote:
"After I left the hall, Shibboleth rattled around in my head all day, and
it haunts me still. When I ask myself why, I realise it is because it looks
like a wound, a gash that can't heal. It offers no hope, leaving you feeling
as empty as the abyss it opens up beneath your feet."12 The crack plays
with the spectator's curiosity getting very thin, almost imperceptible

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THE WORK OF DORIS SALCEDO AND ROSEMBERG SANDOVAL / ALZATE I I

in some places and very complex in others where it is possible to see

the metallic structure (or other concrete components) visually alluding
to fences and crossings along today's borders, and to detention camps.
This way of marking the art-work space as a negative space, of separa-
tion or exclusion, is shared in some ways by Sandoval. A performance
by this artist that has a double intention of criticizing the history of art
as well as contemporary society is the 1999 Mugre (Dirt), which takes
place in a museum gallery. Dirt is an action in which the artist carries a
homeless man slung over his shoulder from the street, where he lives,
into one of the Museum of Moden Art's galleries in the city of Cali. The
spectators, who were participants in an international performance festival,
were waiting in this gallery. First, the artist used the homeless man as
human paintbrush with which he slowly drew a line along the museum's
white wall, a line "of pain and dirt" as the artist writes on his web page.13
Later he put the man down on a wood platform on the museum floor,
on which, using the same procedure, he drew lines rubbing the white
surface with the destitute man's back. In spite of the great differences
between the two works, Salcedo's being more abstract and Sandoval's
intentionally literal, they both manifest the need for spectators to have
a direct experience of the vulnerability of the invisible Other to whose
death and pain we are normally indifferent.
It should be noted that there are those who feel that Sandoval's work
exploits the poverty/misery of others, and those who have criticized Sal-
cedo because the Tate Gallery receives financing from the multinational
corporation Unilever. I feel that these criticism stem from ignorance
regarding the context from which these artists emerged; they began their
careers in the early eighties in the most precarious of ways and when the
possibility of making money from this type of political art in Colombia
was risible. On the other hand, to pass moral judgment on an artist for
using a homeless person as a brush when society at large stigmatizes the
indigent and kills them with indifference or through "social cleansing,"
is not only paradoxical but clearly hypocritical. Insofar as the financing
of Shibboleth, art institutions world-wide rely on commercial tactics
linked to the global financial market, and it would be licit to ask why
it is acceptable for other artists, like Ai Weiwei from China, to exhibit
work in the prestigious Tate Modern and not Salcedo.14 In my opinion
both of these Colombian artists have been true to their original propos-
als, and the fact that the global art market later embraced them does not
invalidate their artistic legitimacy.
Returning to Lévinas, there are clear similarities between his concep-
tions and the works of Salcedo and Sandoval, in the sense that those artists

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1 2 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

understand art as a mechanis

usdirectly. As stated above L
philosophy, based on "the absolu
with the abstract knowledge
beings. 15 This ethic based on
relevant for art, since by its ve
that are concrete, sensorial an
The explanation that we tend t
people is generally based on m
information provided by the
privileges the perspective of
experiences of underprivileg
either lacking or distorted. Thu
controlling their human cond
contemporary world, too deep a
ourselves and the denied Other.
rial presence of the homeless
deny eye contact and, frequent
the possibility that forms of d
knowledge are questioned by t
situated in the middle of the
now, or by the unpredictable
The materiality of Dirt, Shib
mesis, as well as statistics an
in contrast to the ready-made
of transforming a quotidian o
charging it with humanity.
represented but rather direct
presents are loaded with mark
which they evoke, but they d
The direct experience of the
through a physical presence
brings us closer to Lévinas w
give meaning and to affirm o
nas, "the face of the other is th
other signs take their meaning;
from which all other bodily
for Lévinas 'face' does not m
but also the extreme precario
itself in the proximity of the o
found in Salcedo's entombed

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THE WORK OF DORIS SALCEDO AND ROSEMBERG SANDOVAL / ALZATE 1 3

human body as expressive means to leave a trace of dirt in the white

walls of an art gallery.

Art and Politics

Portada: objeto de ofensiva {Cover: Offensive Object) [1984-1985],

is a drawing on paper done to scale of an automatic Molotov cocktail.
According to Sandoval it is a Russian-Spanish bomb redesigned in Co-
lombia by the insurgent movements. In the subtitle that accompanies it
he says that this has been "done with the destroyed hair of the cadaver of
a martyr for national liberation." It is important to clarify that, in contrast
to later developments, in the mid-1980s the Colombian guerrilla had not
become involved in the production of cocaine and used kidnapping for
political rather than monetary ends. Another important aspect is that San-
doval spent much time as a child in a hospital and in the morgue where
his older brothers worked, therefore he takes his relation with death and
human remains naturally.
As Sandoval notes on his webpage, the drawing was sent through
the mail to gallery owners, art collectors, art critics, and artists.18 The
author affirms that in the 1980s when he began his studies and took into
account his precarious economic situation, his life had just three options:
to become an insurgent, a lucid criminal, or a trasgressive artist.19
Today, Sandoval doesn't see the guerrilla in the same way that he did
in that moment, but beyond the political position of the artist, Cover:
Offensive Object remains significant because of its relationship with the
reality of Colombia and because of the question which it posits regarding
the place of art with respect to that reality. The guerrilla movements, and
the "disappeared" (any individual who is an obstacle to the interests of
the political and economic elites, including those who disagree pacifi-
cally), have been constants in modern Colombian history. If art's value
is to make us see the world in a different way through new uses of art
materials, to question that which we take as a given and, in the case of
artists like Salcedo and Sandoval, to humanize others who have been
dehumanized, then Cover: Offensive Object occupies a legitimate position
in the history of Latin American art and its aesthetic tradition.
In our article on Sandoval, Marin and I state that in Colombia the true
scandal does not result from the actions of an artist such as Sandoval but
from the level of degradation of society as a whole.20 As Sandoval said
once, "the country's problem is not poverty but morals" (my translation).21
Here I will turn again to Lévinas' ethics to further elaborate its connection
with Sandoval's work. Lévinas considers that man is the measure of all

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1 4 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

things but only if recognizin

his fellow-man. As mentioned
on a conceptual level but, con
or beside us and toward whom
in the introduction to this ar
peace based on differences: t
continue to express our views w
principles for the Other or se
hair while describing it as bel
spectator of Cover: Offensive
someone as different from us a
posite of what the media, the
usually done by dehumanizing,
of those who think differently
Without a doubt Sandoval's
art, the place of interrogatio
an unrecognizable and evasive
course that dominates the int
guerrillas, who are described
people alienated because of
the dark materiality of that Ot
culture assumes as reality.
In the introduction to this art
conception about the impossibil
Considering that Lacanian p
perspective coincides with Ge
the two World Wars. Accordin
temporal articulations and th
progress lost their substance
had proclaimed.22 The contin
been demonstrated by the de
dictatorships and pseudo-dem
economic "progress," and late
eralism on our countries and b
of September 1 1 . In the case
has been justified with simplist
ian nature of the governmen
unjustified assassination of in
works explore horror and pai
be put into words and/or are
politicians, financial elites, an

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THE WORK OF DORIS SALCEDO AND ROSEMBERG SANDOVAL / ALZATE 1 5

Sandoval expresses sentiments similar to Steiner 's in terms of art as

an institution: "The history of art has watched over social history. There
is an enormous abyss between reality which is the infinite and the history
of art which is invented and sweet. Art is a mafia" (my translation).23
Nevertheless, he also explains that "If [something] truly is art, it doesn't
matter what you make it with, it doesn't matter if somebody makes a little
bird or presents the arm of a cadaver. What artists seek is to produce a
sensation through images and supports. The craft is to produce them in a
heroic or ephemeral way to be able to reveal the soul. Art is the purging
of the inhuman" (my translation).24
To break the isolation in which reality has been captured by language
is, in some measure, Sandoval's objective. That which cannot be sym-
bolized, that which is impossible to understand takes on an aesthetic
and symbolic form in his work. The naive look the spectator might cast
upon reality makes a complete turn so that it now faces an unusual view
in which language no longer manages to interpret and encapsulate the
totality of the Other. Cover: Offensive Object tries to settle in the realm
of darkness as an ontological event; in other words, as the proper space
to reveal an object independent of reality. The artist in this case does not
begin with a particularly different context than the one the spectator has
lived. He inhabits the same culture and language, but he has decided to
choose a part of it that is hidden. Now, when the spectator learns that the
drawing is made of human hair, he is forced to look, led by a negative
force that one might go so far as to call nausea. Even if the spectator is
against this type of art, he loses his naïveté in the way he relates to the
theme, in this case the death of an anonymous Other who might well be
on the opposite side of the political spectrum. The spectator can continue
to hold his political position (be it opposition to or support for the guer-
rilla, leftist or rightist) but he cannot ignore what he has experienced.
The Other here consists of the hair of an inert body and has a face he
cannot subject to his dominion. In Cover: Offensive Object, the art does
not belong to the realm of revelation or creation; it is rather, in the words
of Lévinas, an "event itself of obscuring, a night fall, an invasion of
shadow": a shadow from which the spectator is in full flight.25
While very different in terms of its formal composition, Salcedo 's work
Plegaria muda ( Mute Prayer) [2011-12] also explores a part of reality
that remains shrouded in darkness because in Colombia there has never
been a full and public accounting of the State's crimes towards those
to whom this work refers. Mute Prayer is an installation commissioned
by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the Moderna
Museum in Malmö, Sweden. In its largest display, the work consists of

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1 6 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

166 units, each one made up

the other; sandwiched betwee
centimeters thick which allo
measure approximately 50 cent
of a standard coffin). The spe
front of a labyrinth of coffin
bolized by the blades of grass
Salcedo 's piece showcases
tween 2006 and 2009. Hundre
were lured to another region w
sinated there by members of t
made it appear as if they had
combat. These soldiers were
from the government.
Mute Prayer is a testimonia
makes omnipresent the expe
of the Other from which the s
Salcedo and of Sandoval, the
anonymously or mediated by
justification). These works d
and implicate the spectator d
Mute Prayer, like Sandoval's
symbolic level, liberates a tr
essence - insofar as it is not r
from the information reveal
the hands of the Colombian
of President Alvaro Uribe-Ve
'false positives,' of the killin
young men was denounced in
comments stating that the assa
that the killings were orchestr
to damage the army's image.26
armed groups but a large nu
including public figures and in
or minimise in daily discour
who do not agree with their
the path towards the country
For months, the artist acco
fought to keep their assassin
delinquents or guerrillas, and w
military killers had revealed.
is a foundation for an art th

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THE WORK OF DORIS SALCEDO AND ROSEMBERG SANDOVAL / ALZATE 1 7

words, she "joined this arduous process of elaborating morning and

[. . .] committed to the vain attempt to fight to get justice in spite of the
barbarism committed by the State" (my translation).27 These artistic ob-
jects are not only sepulchers but prayers, offerings against the loneliness
and darkness of the events, to bring to a collective memory the pain that
should be shared because, returning to Lévinas, life has meaning only if
we understand ourselves as human beings facing other human beings.
We could say that, much like Sandoval, Salcedo has delved into the
realm of reality in order to uncover the "real": the pain of poor mothers
to whom nobody listens. That irreparable wound resides in the origin of
her artistic language, since she understands art essentially as testimony.
Thus, art is basically a way to build community with those who are im-
mersed in the most precarious and painful situations of trauma and social
abandonment, and those who correspond to the definition of Lévinas'
Other. According to Salcedo: "the notion of community is born when the
individual opens him or herself to others. To accompany someone to his
or her death, step by step, opens us to the Other, and leads us to forget our
own existence, it unites us to that other, who will then remain inscribed
inside us. The exhaustive investigation I carry out on the deaths of the
victims of violence [. . .] leads me to accompany them, step by step, to
that death, and in that sense I feel as though they are inscribed in me."28
While Mute Prayer would seem to give a spark of hope in the form of
the blades of grass that grow on the tables, the vegetation is so incredibly
fragile that the greyness and the form of the tables end up accentuating
its vulnerability. If the spectator does not linger to actually contemplate
the piece in its entirety (and this happens with Salcedo 's works which
force one to focus on the details), the living material is made invisible by
the dark colors of the tables and the earth, just as the Colombian political
reality is obscured by daily events.
Both Salcedo and Sandoval believe that their art can be an "epiphany,"
a term Lévinas uses to refer to the revelation of the Other. From a phe-
nomenological point of view, this philosopher understands the Other as
gifted with "holiness," which is to say in a state of absolute separation.29
This separation between real and reality is what lends to the works and
installations of both artists an ambience of sacrality. Certainly this is
not a matter of glorious festivity that reveals unto us a shining being.
Nevertheless in this despair, in this pathos, their beauty resides. A beauty
whose pain does not allow the spectator to dissolve into a spiritual or
ideological unity with that which explains or justifies suffering, on the
contrary, it sows in the spectator a huge question: that of his ambiguous
position before the visceral face, dark and strange, that the art work has
revealed.

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 1 8 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

Conclusion

As stated above, art for Salcedo and Sandoval does not have the power
to redeem. In her artist's notes Salcedo wrote, "The time of the massacre
is: unrecoverable, immemorial, unrepresentable."30 In a 2007 interview,
she stated the same idea with a crucial caveat, "Art does not have the
capacity to redeem. Art is impotent in the face of death. Nevertheless,
it has an ability and it is to bring to the realm of humanity the life that
has been desacralized and give it a sort of continuity in the life of the
spectator" (my translation).31 Sandoval, in turn, notes that he creates art
because it allows him to invest "other, superior spaces and magnetize
them [. . .] turning our barbarism into an intelligence regime, since art
is the only thing that allows us to live with death" (my translation).32
The meaning of art for both artists consists of emphasizing human
vulnerability and in building a parallel language that allows for transcen-
dence over a wound which cannot be cured, only shared. The work of
art is understood as a limit of humanity because it allows the spectator
to experience alterity as extreme closeness to the reality of the Other.
These artists remind us that our human condition is the same as those
whom we look down upon or see as enemies, the same as the indigent,
the poor, the guerrillas, the disappeared, the relatives of the victims. And
even if we want to look away, there is art to remind us that the pres-
ence and anguish of those other lives are an essential part of each and
everyone's existence.

NOTES

1 . Richard A. Cohen, Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and

Lévinas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 29.
2. Emmanuel Lévinas, "Peace and Proximity," in Emmanuel Lévinas: Basic Phi-
losophical Writings, eds. Adriaan T. Peperzak et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1996), 161-169.
3. Nancy Princenthal, Carlos Basualdo, and Andreas Husseyn, Doris Salcedo (New
York: Phaidon Press, 2000).
4. Paola Marin and Gastón Alzate, "On Rosemberg Sandoval's Performance Ac-
tions: Questioning the North/South Paradigm," Contemporary Theater Review 22.4
(2012): 512-525.
5. Anika Lemaire, Jacques Lacan (London: Routledge, 1979).
6. George Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of
Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
7. Jairo Alberto Cobo, "Entrevista con Rosemberg Sandoval," Esfera pública , July
7, 2012, http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/?p=40116.
8. Charles Merewether, "Interview with Doris Salcedo," in Doris Salcedo, eds.
Nancy Princenthal, Carlos Basualdo, and Andreas Husseyn (New York: Phaidon Press,
2000), 138-147, 142.

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THE WORK OF DORIS SALCEDO AND ROSEMBERG SANDOVAL / ALZATE 1 9

9. Manuel Toledo, "Doris Salcedo: canto contra el racismo," BBC Mundo , October
9, 2013, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/misc/newsid_7035000/7035694.stm.
10. Paul Celan, "Shibboleth," in Paul Celan: Selected Poems , trans. Michael Ham-
burger and Christopher Middleton, (Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1972), 41.
1 1 . Sarah Lydall, "Caution: Art Afoot," The New York Times , December 1 1 , 2007,
http://www.nytimes.eom/2007/12/l 1 /arts/design/ 1 lcrac.html?_r=0.
12. Richard Dorment, "Doris salcedo: A glimpse into the abyss," The Telegraph ,
October 9, 2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3668416/Doris-Salcedo-A-
glimpse-into-the-abyss.html.
1 3 . http://www.rosembergsandoval.com/mugre.htm.
14. See the book review of Art of the Deal: Contemporary Art in a Global Finan-
cial Market by Noah Horowitz (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013). The
following excerpt summarizes the links between the financing of art institutions and the
global market: "The story, as he tells it, takes us back to the 1950s, when leading muse-
ums, flushed with post-war prosperity, started growing in size and power. The powerfu
institutions acquired all the old art, giving a fillip to prices. Gradually, collectors were
drawn to the contemporary art market, as a result of which prices rose. According to him,
the art market is not much different from other international markets, when it comes to
behind-the-scenes activities and investing tactics involving a network of an investment
consortium of collectors, art museums around the world, dealers and auction houses,
with art buyers completing the chain." "Art of the Deal by Noah Horowitz," The Arts
Trust , 201 3, http://www.theartstrust.com/Magazine_article.aspx?articleid=345.
15. Lévinas, Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969),
251.

1 6. Robert Gibbs, Correlations in Rosenzweig and Lévinas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 1992), 186.
17. Lévinas, "Peace and Proximity," 167.
1 8 . rosembergsandoval. com .
19. Hans-Michael Herzog, ed., Cantos / Cuentos colombianos. Arte Colombiano
contemporáneo (Zurich: Daros-Latinamerica AG, 2005), 207.
20. Marín and Alzate, "On Rosemberg Sandoval's Performance Actions: Questioning
the North/South Paradigm," 522.
2 1 . Diego Guerrero, "R. Sandoval: 20 años de lumpenizar el arte," El Tiempo , April
3, 2008, http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-2884540.
22. Steiner, In Bluebeard's Castle , 8.
23 . Jairo Alberto Cobo, "Entrevista con Rosemberg Sandoval," Esfera pública , July
7, 2012, http://esferapublica.org/nfblog/?p=40116.
24. Rosemberg Sandoval, "Prólogo," rosembergsandoval.com , http://www.rosem-
bergsandoval.com/obras_y_exhibiciones_texto.htm.
25. Lévinas, "Arte y crítica," trans. Saúl Kaminer, Fractal: Revista trimestral , n.d.,
http : //www. mxfractal . org/F2 8 le vinas .html .
26. For examples of the aforementioned readers' comments you may see 'Casi dos
años de falsos positivos en Soacha, y solo un caso avanza', El Tiempo, May 31, 2011,
http://www.eltiempo.com/justicia/ARTICULO-WEB-NEW_NOTA JNTERIOR-9 506065.
html. For an article in English on the scandal, see Jeremy McDermott, "Toxic Fallout of
Colombia Scandal," BBC News, May 2009, http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/americas/8038399.
stm.

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20 SOUTH CENTRAL REVIEW

27. "La plegaria muda de Doris S

bogota. vive . in/arte/bogota/artic
RIOR_VIVEIN-11350901.html.
28. Merewether, "Interview with
29. Lévinas, Totality and Infinity
30. Doris Salcedo, "Artist's Writ
3 1 . Toledo, "Doris Salcedo: cant
32. Sandoval, "Prólogo," rosemberg
com/obras_y_exhibiciones_texto.h

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