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The use of a monument for peace fuels social unrest in Colombia

2021-05-15T05:30:27.859Z


The art world protests the presence of President Iván Duque in an installation commissioned from the artist Doris Salcedo on the agreements with the FARC


Room where Iván Duque's meeting with the Church was held.

In the background you can see the work of the Belgian artist Francis Als covered.

The floor of the room is covered with plates created with the molten weapons of the FARC. Presidency of the Republic

The scene went unnoticed.

In the midst of the crisis that plagues Colombia and that has caused at least 41 deaths, a meeting between President Iván Duque with a group of priests to try to defuse social protests passed without much echo.

Alerts from the Colombian art world jumped when it was learned that the meeting had taken place in

Fragmentos, Espacio de Arte y Memoria, a

memorial commemorating the peace agreement with the FARC that contains a homonymous work commissioned from the renowned artist Doris Salcedo.

More information

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  • Doris Salcedo, the Colombian artist who melted 37 tons of weapons delivered by the Farc

The piece was built in 2018 with more than 8,000 weapons that ex-guerrillas handed over and that the creator, together with women victims of sexual abuse, cast and turned into 1,300 metal plates on which you can walk. It is in a large house considered a place for memory and homage, very close to the Casa de Nariño, seat of Government. It is also designed as a space for the exhibition, every year and for half a century, which is the time that the war lasted, of the work of Colombian or foreign artists.

In the art world, it has been annoyed that the Government used it as a meeting space and that the work

Salam Tristesse Irak 2016-2020

, by Francis Alÿs, which was exhibited on the walls of the space, was covered in white for President Duque's event . The Ministry of Culture confirmed to EL PAÍS that, after the controversy, the Belgian artist asked to dismantle his exhibition. “Although we deeply regret [Alÿs's decision], it was respected by the members of the artistic committee. Since May 12, the dismantling process began and therefore the museum will continue to be closed even if the restriction measures due to the third wave of covid were lifted, ”the ministry indicated in writing.

'Fragmentos', Doris Salcedo's "countermonument" in the center of Bogotá made with molten metal from FARC weapons. Camilo Rozo

Colombian artist Doris Salcedo told

Hyperallergic

, a medium specialized in contemporary culture, that

Fragmentos

had been used “abusively, breaking all international conservation and copyright norms”.

The Executive assures that "the space was chosen given its symbolic importance as it was created to promote the construction of dialogues and reflections" and, he continues, "at no time was any national or international norm in the use of space broken."

For some artists and curators, it is another act that reflects the government's disinterest in the peace agreement with the FARC. The work was commissioned by former President Juan Manuel Santos directly to Salcedo. "The floor of

Fragments

it contains the rage of women victims of sexual violence in the conflict and to use the space as if it were a white cube is terribly violent.

This could be framed within the re-victimization: it is a space to honor the victims, but it is used to organize dialogues that seek to continue impoverishing Colombians and violently repressing those who do not agree, ”Valentina Gutiérrez, director of the Espacio El Dorado art gallery.

Lucas Ospina, professor of Arts at the Universidad de los Andes, who joined the strike along with his students, says that the problem is not that they dialogue in space, but rather the use of the place so that “the president can make statements that demonize the social protest".

A government with little love for culture

The meeting at the site has also been read as a sign that the Duque government places little value on culture. The Executive promotes the "orange economy" more focused on entrepreneurship, but this is not well received by a wide artistic sector of the country, which considers it empty of content. "This is how the rulers vampirize culture," said critic and art curator Cuauhtémoc Medina on Twitter. The debate is open and there are those who consider that the discussion should go beyond Salcedo's work and focus on the voice of the artists against the acts of police brutality.

Criticisms have been directed at the Minister of Culture, Felipe Buitrago. "The symbolic usurpation of the place is terrifying, but the most serious thing is that it is done by the ministry, which is in charge of watching over and safeguarding the union," says Juan Sebastián Ramírez, director of the Galleria Bis, in Cali.

Salcedo's work has not been the only symbolic terrain in dispute during the social protests against the government. In Cúcuta, on the border with Venezuela, and in Medellín, protesters have made murals against the Executive erased by the military or by politicians attached to the Democratic Center, the party to which the Colombian president belongs. In one of them, a tribute was paid to Lucas Villa, a protester killed by civilians during the protests. The image was destroyed as it happened in 2020 with other murals that remembered the victims of the police violence that occurred in Colombia last September.

Professor Ospina believes that it is in the streets and with expressions like this that artists are expressing themselves politically.

"The art of the grassroots is giving a lesson to the art of the elite, which ends up being irrelevant because they are not willing to take risks: they use political issues, but they do not act politically."

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Source: elparis

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