Tag: traces

Jannis Kounellis (B. 1936)
Napoli
signed, titled and dated, ‘Kounellis, Napoli ’75’ (on the paper);
inscribed ‘Jannis Kounellis, Opera realization izata il 28.5.1975. A Napoli (Hotel Excelsior). Ed esporista a Napoli ala Lucio Amelio Jiunio a Ottobre 1975’ (on the underside of the vitrine)
shoes, gold paint and paper in a glass and metal vitrine
36 x 27 x 19in. (91.4 x 70.5 x 50.1cm.) 

  1. Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios [Irritable], 1996, wall installation with drywall, shoes, cow bladder and surgical thread (four niches), 116.8 × 170.2 cm, 46 × 67 in., photo © Todd-White Art Photography Courtesy White Cube, © Doris Salcedo and White Cube
  2. Doris Salcedo, Atrabiliarios [Irritable], 1996, wall installation with drywall, shoes, cow bladder and surgical thread (four niches), 116.8 × 170.2 cm, 46 × 67 in., photo courtesy Art Gallery of New South Wales 
  3. Installation view: Doris Salcedo, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, June 26–October 12, 2015, Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

“In ‘Atrabiliarios’ Salcedo evokes absence and loss by using materials and processes that locate memory in the body. The viewer’s response is, in turn, emotional, even visceral, rather than purely intellectual. Niches cut into the plaster wall contain shoes as relics or attributes of lost people, donated by the families of those who have disappeared. Shoes are particularly personal items as they carry the imprint of our body more than any other item of clothing. She then sealed the niches with a membrane of cow bladder, which she literally sutured into the plaster of the wall as if picturing the literal process of internalised bodily memory. Barely visible through the animal skin membrane, the shoes are a haunting evocation of their absent owners and inevitably recall the grizzly souvenirs of Nazi death camps.”

— Art Gallery of New South Wales Contemporary Collection Handbook, 2006