Invocation and Evocation: Ghost of Violence in Sumando ausencias by Doris Salcedo

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Published: May 1, 2020
Keywords:
Sumando ausencias, Doris Salcedo, Hauntology, Colombian armed conflict, Post-accord and Post-conflict

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Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez
Savannah College of Art and Design

Abstract

This article examines the art installation Adding Absences (2016) by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo as a space of ghostly memory. I understand the performance as a space where the absence of those who were killed during the Colombian conflict is used to conjure ghosts that are present as memory and that resist oblivion. For the analysis of this art installation, I use Derridian hauntology (and its theoretical derivatives) as a framework for analysis, and I resort to cultural and artistic studies of Salcedo's work, all in relation to the conflict, the post-accord and the possible post-conflict.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 55 (2020): Narrative, Visual Arts and Film in Light of the Peace Accords in Colombia
Section
Articles
Author Biography

Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez, Savannah College of Art and Design

Gabriel Eljaiek-Rodríguez is Head of Spanish Instruction and Latin American Studies at The New School of Atlanta, and Professor of Liberal Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design. His specialty areas include horror cinema, Latin American gothic literature, migration studies, and post-humanism. He is the author of The Migration and Politics of Monsters in Latin American Cinema (2018), and Selva de fantasmas: el gótico en la literatura y el cine latinoamericanos (2017).