Memoria y violencia en las producciones artísticas colombianas contemporáneas: Doris Salcedo, Óscar Muñoz y Clemencia Echeverri

Abstract

Based on the study of the works of Doris Salcedo: 6 and 7 of November (2002) and Quebrantos (2019); of Óscar Muñoz: Ambulatorio (1994), Proyecto para un Memorial (2004-2005), Biografías (2002), Aliento (1995), Impresiones débiles (2011); and of Clemencia Echeverri: Treno (2007), Nóctulo (2015), and Duelos (2019), the following work aims to problematize the relationship between art, memory, and body in a context of violence. Through an analysis of the works and the way in which the different actors of violence are represented—victims, perpetrators, and witnesses—it also seeks to promote reflection on the possible relationships of these concepts with state power and its institutions in concrete, metaphorical, or symbolic ways within the artworks. To this end, a theoretical study and analysis will be conducted, primarily addressing the concepts of memory, image, and representation in the artistic works of the three mentioned artists. The theoretical debate among the various works and the concepts addressed will center around the following guiding question: how do the artistic works of these three artists propose an alternative way of enunciating the historical memory of the bodies represented in contexts of violence, in this case, the Colombian context, and how can that memory be inscribed in the physical, theoretical, artistic, and institutional bodies that question the memory of violence? This will involve reflecting on and demonstrating some of the limits of representation and the openness to the possibilities of the unrepresentable and unspeakable through art, as well as some of its expressive possibilities. The thesis is divided into five chapters: the first is introductory, covering some foundational concepts that permeate the studied works, as well as understanding the political and social context from which the artists and their works are approached in this study; there will be one chapter dedicated to each artist. II. Doris Salcedo, III. Óscar Muñoz, IV. Clemencia Echeverri, the fifth and final chapter corresponds to a reflection on the artistic and methodological confluence among these three artists as well as their possible differences. I seek to demonstrate through the study of these three artists and the selected works part of the ways in which the memory of violence and armed conflict in Colombia is constituted, as well as possible paths that envision other possibilities of understanding and memorializing that violence through the relationship between art and memory.