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La Casa Viuda I (The Widowed House)
La Casa Viuda I (The Widowed House)
© Doris Salcedo and White Cube, used with permission.

La Casa Viuda I (The Widowed House)

Artist (Colombian, born 1958)
Date1992–1994
Mediumwood and fabric
Dimensions257.8 x 59.7 x 38.7 cm (101 1/2 x 23 1/2 x 15 1/4 in.)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of the Friends of Contemporary Art
Object number1994.241
Label TextDeeply affected by the protracted violence and civil war in her native Colombia, Doris Salcedo began a series of narrative sculptures in 1992 built around found doors and based on first-hand evidence from victims’ families and loved ones whom she sought out and interviewed. Without knowing the specifics commemorated in La Casa Viuda I, we can read a story of domestic vulnerability implicit in the materials Salcedo reworked. No longer a place of passage, a door has been rendered useless; it is barricaded near the floor with the fragments of a small wooden chair impregnated with the remnants of a lacy, pale blue dress, some of which is worn to near disintegration. Salcedo believes, “Sculpture is its materiality…Used materials are profoundly human; they all bespeak the presence of a human being…I’m not building bronze or marble monuments but producing works that refer to something extremely private that challenge us constantly by virtue of their fragility.”ProvenanceBrooke Alexander Gallery
On View
On view