Doris Salcedo

Salcedo’s works have left me a deep impression since I first saw her work in White Cube. There’s a piece called ‘ Tabula Rasa IV ‘, which is a group of broken desks. All desks are combined with small wood fragments. This work is dealing with people’s suffering, which looks fine at the outside, but it’s broken inside. It makes me think of the trauma after war or painful experience. It relates to the concept of my work- unmasking the truth that hides behind the surface and arousing the audience's attention when they look at the artwork.

“I worked with materials that are already charged with significance, with a meaning they have acquired in the practice of everyday life.The speak the presence of human.”

Since I’ve started to use domestic objects as materials for my installation, and told stories that not belong to myself, Doris Salcedo is always the artist who inspires me of working through the ‘otherness’, which means to work with the feeling that it never quite belongs to you. She uses first-hand evidence, like interviews, as the raw material of her works. By knowing the stories from victims, their sufferings become hers. Doris Salcedo made these big domestic pieces and displayed them in a public space because she thinks the experience had to be taken to a collective space and away from the anonymity of the private experience. The audience may find something in the work that triggers his or her own memories of sorrow, or some personal recollection. For my own practice, I'm also interested in sharing private experience, no matter from myself or others, in public space, in order to motivate the audience's empathy and arouse their reflection.