In 2003, between the months of September and November, 1,500 chairs were slotted and shoved into a giant stack that filled the gap between two buildings in Istanbul. This installation, which seemed both full of violence yet disquietingly empty, spoke of loss, mourning, absence and destruction. Although only now existing in photographs, and in the memory of those who witnessed it, the work makes us wonder where all these chairs came from, who they once belonged to, and what the lives of the people who sat on them were like, as they gathered with others and conversed. Were their lives turned upside down too?
Untitled, 2003, was by Doris Salcedo, the Colombian-born artist who grew up during the Colombian conflict, the battle between the government, crime syndicates, far-right and far-left groups that began in 1964. Salcedo’s work often focuses on the human experience of war, or the futile borders that keep our world divided. “I am a third world artist,” she once said, adding that she looked at the world “from the perspective of the victim, the defeated people”.
