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Tate to feature chair and hair artist
By Alexa Baracaia and Esther Walker, Evening Standard 10.04.07
Wood works: Doris Salcedo makes the finishing touches to one of her sculptures
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A sculptor who uses chairs, tables and human hair as metaphors for bloody warfare has become the eighth contributor to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.
Doris Salcedo, 39, has been invited to create the Unilever Series commission for the space from October.
Common themes in the Colombian's work include the destructive force of violence, trauma and the tragedy of human loss.
In 2002 Salcedo lowered 280 chairs down the facade of the Palace of Justice in Bogota to pay homage to those killed there in a failed guerrilla coup.
The following year, in Istanbul, she filled a derelict plot with 1,550 wooden chairs - to evoke the masses of faceless migrants who underpin the globalised economy.
She often uses unorthodox materials such as human hair, cement and clothes in her sculptures.
Her installation will mark a dramatic change in the mood of the Turbine Hall, which most recently housed artist Carsten Holler's popular slides and will next be home to a Victorian-style fairground carousel from Brazilian artist Marepe.
Tate Modern director Vicente Todoli said today: "Chosen not least for her exceptional ability to engage with architectural space, we look forward to seeing how Salcedo's commission will engage as much with the iconic architecture of the Turbine Hall as with the symbolic significance of Tate Modern within the international contemporary art world".
Salcedo, who trained as a painter rather than a sculptor, has been described as an "intensely political" artist. She has sparked controversy with a number of her installations which comment on the politics of Colombia.
In 2002, Salcedo stuffed shoes into crevices cut into the gallery's walls. The shoes belonged to victims of Colombia's civil war, the effect was chillingly reminiscent of the photographs of the piles of shoes belonging to Holocaust victims.
She has also spoken out about Britain's involvement in the war on Iraq, calling it "catastrophic".
The Turbine Hall installation will not be the first time Salcedo has shown work in London. In 2004, she exhibited in the White Cube gallery in Hoxton where she made an installation out of layers of wire netting to make a work inspired by Kafka's novella Metamorphosis.
The giant installations in the turbine hall have proved to be massively successful with the public. Tate Modern is the world's most popular modern art museum and the second most visited venue in the country.
Last year it attracted 4.9 million visitors, an increase of 21 per cent on the previous year.
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