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April 29, 2025 – Review
“La madre, las palabras con los nombres, un sorbo y cuatro rayos”
Kim Córdova

How do we move beyond histories that no longer fully represent us? The 2016 peace agreement with the FARC, which brought to an end roughly fifty years of war between the Colombian government and left-wing militia groups, stipulated three monuments to be built from the militias’ surrendered weapons and munitions. Doris Salcedo’s commemorative monument in Bogotá—a commission from the Colombian Ministry of Culture—inverted and expanded the idea of heroism usually accorded to monuments. She designed a cast iron floor made from thirty-seven tons of melted-down weapons that were cast in molds hammered into shape by women victims of sexual violence by guerrillas during the conflict.
This anti-monument was installed in a new cultural center—Fragmentos Espacio de Arte y Memoria—in the retrofitted ruins of a house from 1565 in Bogotá’s La Candelaria neighborhood. The center follows the example of local leaders, including former Bogotá mayor and social practice artist Antanas Mockus, in its aim: to fuse art and policy and bring publics together to process the trauma of decades of war. At Fragmentos, curator Carolina Cerón gathers pieces by five Colombian artists—Mónica Restrepo, Ana María Montenegro, María Leguizamo, David Medina, and María Isabel Arango—whose work “bridges past and present.” The …