The banal, the domestic and the female body: the presence of absence in Doris Salcedo's La casa Viuda series

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the series La casa Viuda (1992-1995) by Colombian artist Doris Salcedo (Bogotá, 1958). This work was inspired by rural Colombian women who were forced to leave their homes in search of safety. It consists of doors, cabinets, domestic furniture displaced from their buildings and which evoke the absence of the body, the loss of the home and the lack of shelter that these families were forced to endure. We will investigate how Salcedo alters the use of domestic objects and how it breaks with the tradition that establishes an interior painting built around intimacy and the female body, since all these relationships disappear in this installation. In addition, we will try to observe how issues related to material culture and the body are linked to problems of gender, race and social class in South America, considering that La casa Viuda was elaborated based on the testimonies of women victims of political violence in Colombia.