CIVA's Seen Journal XVIII on Hope now available

SEEN Journal XVIII: Hope is now available with guest editor Taylor Worley who compiled a series of great essays from artists, and presenters at CIVA’s 2017 biennial conference.

My essay focuses on Colombian artist Doris Salcedo and unravels how her memorial aesthetics functions as site for remembrance of suffering, resistance to injustices, and healing of civic woulds. Some of Salcedo’s installations afford viewers the opportunity to face the pain caused by civic trauma, calling forth acts of public witnessing so that a new and more hopeful future may be communally forged. Artworks that hold the complex tensions of distress and possibility for renewal provide an experience that invites openness, irresolution, and a “collecting of beauty,” despite the tragedy the work encapsulates.

You can get a copy of the journal here.

Doris Salcedo, Noviembre 6 y 7 2002, two hundred and eighty wooden chairs and rope, dimensions variable ephemeral public project, Palace of Justice, Bogotá, 2002. photo: Sergio Clavijo, image courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York.